


Letters, Resolved

by earlgreytea68



Series: Letters [5]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-28
Updated: 2014-01-26
Packaged: 2017-12-30 17:15:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 14
Words: 55,253
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1021303
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/earlgreytea68/pseuds/earlgreytea68
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The letters have been written, read, and discussed. But that doesn't mean anything's been resolved. Yet.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Here it is! Finally! I hope it is worth the long protracted wait for it and all the teasing I've been doing about it! :-)
> 
> Thank you to arctacuda for the beta and flawedamythyst for the Britpick.

Chapter One

The cabin was devoid of books or television. Or, at least, the living room was. What had Sherlock been _doing_ with all of his time? Well, going slowly insane was, John supposed, the answer to that. And John was following him there, prowling over every inch of the cabin in search of something to do. Everything behind the bedroom door was eerily silent, and John resisted the tempting suspicion that Sherlock had climbed out the bedroom window to escape. Instead, John tried to force himself to remain calm and focus on keeping the fire going so the cabin wouldn’t get unbearably cold and on trying not to think about how hungry he was. He munched on another protein bar and considered that, if Sherlock didn’t agree to leave quickly, they were going to be in real trouble food-wise. John wished he’d stopped to pick up more supplies when he’d realized how close he was to Sherlock, but he’d been so eager to _get_ there, to _see_ him. Plus he had not expected Sherlock to be in such dire shape that he wouldn’t even have a decent amount of something edible in the cabin. John made himself a cup of tea and told himself to think about something else. But the only subject his brain was the least bit interested in was the subject of Sherlock, and John could not stop it from returning inexorably to the topic. He’d hurt Sherlock. He’d devastated Sherlock. Unknowingly. Unthinkingly. He’d caused far more damage than he’d realized, and he had no idea how he was going to fix it. He had no idea if Sherlock was even going to give him the chance. 

And how different this was than how John had thought it would go. He thought he’d find Sherlock and be the one accepting apologies. Lovingly, of course, because any fury had long since transformed itself into relief, but still, he had thought it would be _Sherlock_ worrying about fixing things, not the other way around. 

And how had he never thought of what a mess he would find Sherlock in? He had known from the letters that Sherlock was a mess, but somehow he had been unable to imagine it. He had thought that Sherlock would snap back into himself upon seeing him, arrogant and untouchable and prickly. Maybe Sherlock hadn’t died on the pavement that day, but the hard outer shell of him had shattered. He was a bundle of aching, exposed vulnerabilities that John had, wrongly, spent precious little time worrying over before when clearly he should have been. He was never going to forgive himself for not worrying more about Sherlock, or about the things about Sherlock he should have been worrying about, not just about whether he ate or slept or was thinking about taking drugs but whether his heart was breaking over him. It had never occurred to John to worry about that. 

The sound of the bedroom door opening in the quiet room was so deafeningly loud that John jumped. He looked away from the crackle of the flames in the fireplace. 

Sherlock stood in the doorway, still dressed in the suit he’d put on that morning, which felt like it had been a lifetime ago. It had been dark for hours, but the darkness in Siberia in winter came early, so John had no idea what time it really was. He had forced himself to hide his watch in his pack because he’d been looking at it every minute, and that had not been helpful. 

Behind Sherlock the bedroom was dark, and John hadn’t bothered to turn on lights in the living room, so the only light was from the fire, and it obscured more than it showed. 

“You’re still here,” said Sherlock. His tone was blank, unreadable. 

“Of course,” responded John. “I told you: I’m not leaving.”

“And there’s the obvious fact that we’re snowed in.”

“I thought maybe you would leave,” said John. 

“We’re snowed in,” said Sherlock, again, and John winced. 

“Do you want me to go?” he asked, hating how much he thought he knew the answer. 

Sherlock moved into the room, not looking at John. He sat carefully beside John on the sofa, not touching him, and looked thoughtfully into the fire. He was holding John’s letter, John noted. Clutching it, really. It was wrinkled where his fist was clenched around it. John looked from the letter to Sherlock’s profile but could discern nothing. 

Sherlock licked his lips and swallowed and said, so softly that John had to tip his head to catch it, “No.”

John took a moment to absorb that. It was something, he thought. It was a start. “Okay,” he said slowly, thinking hard. “Good. I’m glad.” He fell silent, and Sherlock’s gaze remained fixed on the fire, and when John decided Sherlock wasn’t going to say anything else, he ventured, cautiously, “Listen. We need food…” 

“I can’t go back to London,” interjected Sherlock firmly, much more steadily than he had told John not to go. 

John’s mind balked a little at that. He wanted to ask, _What, ever?_ And then in the same heartbeat realized he didn’t care. If Sherlock could never manage to go back home again then John would stay here in Siberia with him for the rest of their lives. It would be so much better than ever going back to London without him. He said, soothingly, “Okay. That’s fine. We’ll stay here. As long as you want. But I’ll need to go out and get us food.”

Sherlock took a deep, shaky breath. “I missed your terrible cooking.”

John wanted to weep with relief over the _wonderfulness_ of that insult. He forced himself to try to behave normally. “My cooking isn’t terrible.”

“I missed the way you always burn roast chicken you try to make it.”

“Roast chicken is _tricky_ ,” John defended himself automatically, closing his eyes because he could hear that his tone was swamped with the weight of how much he’d missed these conversations. 

“It isn’t, really,” replied Sherlock, and his voice sounded as heavy with tears as John’s had. “It’s science, John.”

John cleared his throat and opened his eyes and was relieved when his next sentence was much lighter. “Is this your way of requesting I roast a chicken for us tomorrow?”

Sherlock looked at him, and John hadn’t expected it, and the force of all that attention nearly knocked him sideways. “I don’t want to stay here,” he said helplessly. “I can’t go back to London, and I don’t want to stay here, and—”

“All right,” said John, calmly, because he thought Sherlock needed calm steadiness desperately right now. Sherlock’s wildness had always forced John into evenness in reaction, and John fell easily back into the old habit. “We’ll go somewhere else, then. Can I make a suggestion for someplace warm?” John thought of Afghanistan and hastily added, “Tropical? The Caribbean?”

He heard Sherlock exhale slowly, eyes still sharp on him. “A holiday?” He sounded skeptical. 

“Call it what you like,” replied John, “but Christ knows we both need a holiday.”

Sherlock was silent for a moment, and then he nodded. When he spoke again his tone was brisk, and he sounded much more like his old self. “Were you followed here?”

John shook his head. “I was careful.”

“But Mycroft is thorough. He’ll have noticed you left the country.”

“He knew I was coming after you. I let him follow me to Argentina. Then I picked up a fake identity.”

“Where?” asked Sherlock, sounding curious that John had even thought to do such a thing. 

“From the same bloke who gave you yours. Charming fellow,” drawled John, sarcastically, because the wanker had pulled a knife on John immediately upon seeing him and it had only been a great deal of money that had changed his mind about that. 

Sherlock rolled his eyes in disgust, and John felt like they’d achieved much more normality between them in the span of a few sentences than he would ever have guessed. “If he told you, he’ll tell Mycroft’s men, and neither of us is safe. We should get new identities.”

Not wanting to upset Sherlock now that he finally seemed more like himself, John considered before saying, “Fine. If you want, we’ll do that. But can I ask: What’s the harm in telling Mycroft you’re okay? He’s worried about you.”

Sherlock snorted. “No, he’s not.”

“You’re his brother. Of course he is.”

“He seemed worried to you, did he?” 

“Yes. Not in the way normal people would be worried, but, you know, neither of you is especially normal in how you express—” John cut himself off, thinking maybe they shouldn’t get back into the minefield of Sherlock’s emotions. “Anyway, he wasn’t worried, he was sad. He thought you were dead.”

“He was supposed to.”

“Well. Well done, I guess.”

Sherlock regarded him for a moment. “But you didn’t.”

“Didn’t what?”

“Didn’t think I was dead.”

John looked evenly back. “I thought that once before. Turns out it was a huge mistake. I try not to make the same mistake twice.”

“I can’t deal with Mycroft,” said Sherlock, after a moment. 

“I’ll make sure he doesn’t bother us,” John promised. 

Sherlock looked at him, and the air was suddenly thick with tension, and John realized abruptly everything that was hanging in the balance. 

“Do you trust me?” he asked, terrified of the answer. 

Sherlock looked at him for a few more silent moments. And then he said, “Yes. Okay. Yes.” And then he stood up and went into the bedroom. 

John hesitated, and then pulled out his mobile and turned it on. It picked up a weak signal and downloaded an obscene number of texts and voicemails. John ignored all of them, crafting a single text to Mycroft. _Sherlock is okay. He needs some time. If you bother us, I will post every state secret I know to the blog._ John waited until it sent, then turned his mobile back off. He looked toward the bedroom. The door was open, which John took as an invitation. Or, at least, not a barrier.

He stood and slowly walked over to the doorway, wanting to make sure Sherlock heard him. Sherlock had turned a lamp on and was sitting up in bed, fingers steepled to his lips. John wanted to know what he was thinking about.

Sherlock looked over at him, his eyebrows raised expectantly. 

“How much pain are you in?” John asked. 

“A curious question coming from the person who destroyed all of my pain medication,” remarked Sherlock, sarcastically. 

“Of course I kept some. I’m not heartless. There was just no need for you to have an entire pharmacy.”

Sherlock was silent for a beat. Then he said, “I’m fine. But I think I would feel much better if I had a cigarette.”

“Outside,” said John, mildly. 

“Hmph,” responded Sherlock and went back to his thinking. 

It was so normal— _so normal_ —that John wondered if he was dreaming. Or if he’d dreamed the six months before this. And he didn’t want it, necessarily, to be that normal, to go back to exactly the way it had been. He had spent six months wishing that he’d let Sherlock know how he’d felt about him. And Sherlock had apparently spent the whole of their acquaintance regretting his inability to express how he felt. John was loath to let them fall back into their old patterns, to ignore all the lessons they’d learned. 

John walked into the room, leaned over the bed, and smoothed a hand over Sherlock’s head before pressing a kiss into Sherlock’s thicket of overgrown hair. He felt Sherlock hold his breath in surprised reaction to this, and John left his lips pressed against Sherlock and closed his eyes and thanked the same God, if He existed, who had let him live in Afghanistan, for the miracle of this second chance with Sherlock. He promised that God not to waste it the way he’d wasted it the first time around. 

“I love you,” said John, before he straightened and left the room. He could sense Sherlock’s stunned astonishment behind him, and John thought that was fine. Sherlock might not say it back to him yet, but eventually they would get there. Eventually Sherlock would believe him. Eventually they would both take the momentousness of those words for granted, a statement as incontrovertible as the color of the sky. 

John stretched out on the sofa, looked into the fire, and listened to the quiet sounds of Sherlock thinking in the other room. He eventually fell asleep with a smile on his face. 

***

Sherlock let John choose the destination. John chose Anguilla because it was the first one alphabetically and John didn’t want to think much harder than that. Sherlock went along willingly but was tense for the course of the entire journey. They used their fake passports upon Sherlock’s insistence, and Sherlock’s jumpiness made John think that he was happy Mycroft was probably tracking them. Sherlock had said he was going after Moriarty’s network, and certainly Sherlock had been nearly killed by them in Argentina; John had no desire to face them. Well, not true. He’d gladly beat up whoever had put a hand on and a bullet in Sherlock, but not while he was trying to keep Sherlock calm. 

John rented them a car. Sherlock, uncharacteristically, was disinclined to drive and ceded the keys to John. John drove and drove and drove, as far as the island would let him, and Sherlock stayed silent, gaze never leaving the flatness of the island going past the car windows. 

John parked the car in the parking lot of the hotel he’d booked them and was pleased when it was as isolated as it had promised online. Sherlock looked about them with keen curiosity, following John inside, and John was relieved that he seemed interested in the place. John gave his fake name and a fake credit card and was given the key to the two-bedroom villa he’d rented. Sherlock followed him out over the grounds of the hotel, walking past clusters of villas until finally there was only one left, isolated, perched at the edge of the long white-sand beach. It was a lovely little place, with to-die-for views of the ocean under a dazzling blue sky, but what John thought Sherlock would appreciate was how exposed it was. Impossible to sneak up along that beach that provided no cover. There were no other people around, and they would spot anyone who tried to approach immediately. 

Sherlock walked through all of the villa’s rooms. John let him, giving him space, pouring himself a glass of the welcome champagne that had been left chilling in the villa’s lounge area and stepping out onto the wraparound verandah. He perched on the railing and looked out over the ocean. The sun was shining, the temperature was perfect, a light breeze was blowing, and John felt optimistic. 

Sherlock stepped onto the verandah and John turned to look at him. Without saying a word, Sherlock walked over and perched on the railing, back against the pole nearest John. He glanced up and down the beach. There were a few guests sunbathing, but they were a fair distance away. Sherlock seemed to dismiss them, turning back to John, and then he visibly relaxed, uncoiling in front of John’s eyes. He smiled, a genuine smile, not one haunted with fear or regret or sorrow, and John thought it was the first one of those he’d seen so far. He found himself smiling in return. 

“You’re going to get all suntanned,” remarked Sherlock. “The way you were when we first met.”

“If I don’t accidentally burn myself to a crisp,” John replied good-naturedly. 

“Your hair will get bleached by the sun again.” Sherlock sounded delighted at the prospect. 

John wanted to ask how long Sherlock intended them to be staying there, but decided he didn’t care. There were worse places to be trapped than a little beach at the edge of a Caribbean island. 

He said, lightly, “Maybe I’ll learn how to scuba dive. I’ve always wanted to do that.”

“Of course you have. John Watson: adventurer. Had you been born in the fifteenth century, you would have sailed with Columbus.”

“Had you been born in the fifteenth century, you would have told me I was an idiot for going off in a boat to prove something you’d already proven with science.”

“But I would have had to know astronomy to prove that,” rejoined Sherlock. 

John laughed. “I’m going to teach you astronomy, I’ve decided.”

“That is a very grand way of saying that you’re going to remind me that the Earth goes ’round the sun, a fact I have never forgotten since you chose to broadcast it to the rest of the population.”

“I’d teach you more than that.”

“I also know the order of the planets. And that there’s some debate about Pluto.”

“How do you know that?”

“I’ve had some time recently,” said Sherlock, eyes flickering toward the ocean. Then he cleared his throat and forced his gaze back to John and lightness back into his tone. “Anyway, with that we have exhausted your knowledge of astronomy.”

John shrugged and sipped his champagne. “Doesn’t mean we can’t still do some star-gazing.”

“You don’t know the constellations,” said Sherlock, smiling. 

“I’m fairly confident of my ability to pick out Orion’s belt, I’ll have you know,” responded John, primly, enjoying the give-and-take of the conversation. 

Sherlock leaned his head back against the pole and closed his eyes, basking in the sun. He looked dangerously content, and John thought, with a sort of sad dawning of realization, that it was possibly the first time he’d ever seen Sherlock look so content. “Well, I look forward to the lesson, then.”

John sipped his champagne and looked at the ocean for a moment, then back to Sherlock. He experimentally reached out with his foot, nudging at Sherlock’s leg. 

“Mmm?” said Sherlock, not opening his eyes.

John had been pleased that Sherlock hadn’t flinched at the contact. “Don’t fall asleep like that.”

“I don’t just ‘fall asleep’ places, John,” protested Sherlock, sleepily. 

“You’re full in the sun; you’ll get all sunburnt and blistered, especially with your complexion.”

“Ever the caretaker,” mumbled Sherlock. 

“Of you? Yes. Always.” John nudged at his leg again. “I’m serious. If you’re going to nap, move to the shade.”

Sherlock opened his eyes and looked very gravely at John. “If I napped, what would you do?”

John held his gaze and said, truthfully, “I’d watch over you to make sure no one came anywhere near you.”

Sherlock did not react in any visible way, simply maintained the gaze calmly, and then eventually stood without a word. He walked into the villa, and John looked back out to the ocean and took another sip of his champagne. 

“John.”

John turned his head and looked back at Sherlock, who had reappeared in the doorway to the verandah. 

Sherlock hesitated, and then said, slowly, looking uncertain, “Thank you. This is…lovely.”

John waited until his throat opened enough for him to manage, “Of course.”

Sherlock nodded once and disappeared back into the villa.

***

Sherlock slept. John ordered them room service and, when Sherlock seemed inclined to sleep through supper, ate by himself on the verandah, keeping careful watch up and down the beach for anything suspicious. John thought that Sherlock probably desperately needed to sleep. He suspected Sherlock had not slept very well for the entire six months he’d been dead. And he knew Sherlock had not slept during the flight, had instead stayed awake, watchful and tense. John knew the abstract of what had been done to Sherlock; the way Sherlock behaved made John shy away from grasping it more concretely, for fear his heart would absolutely break. 

When Sherlock finally came back out onto the verandah it was dark and John was frowning up at the stars, trying to pick out constellations. 

“Hello,” he said, pleasantly, purposely trying to make sure that Sherlock did not feel self-conscious over his long nap. 

Sherlock said nothing. He walked barefoot over to the verandah’s railing and leaned out over it, looking up and down the dark beach. In the far distance, from the direction of the hotel’s restaurant, came faint laughter. 

Sherlock turned away from the railing, eyes going now to the remains of the room service tray. 

“I’m afraid it’s cold now,” said John. “But there’s some salad there you could have. Or some chocolate cake?” John would settle for Sherlock eating anything at all. 

Sherlock made a disinterested noise, but leaned over John and picked up the bottle of wine John had ordered with the meal. 

“You didn’t open this,” said Sherlock. 

“Seemed silly to sit and drink wine all by myself,” John replied. 

Sherlock had taken the corkscrew. John watched him uncork the wine and pour out two glasses, taking one and handing the other one to John. John put a hand on Sherlock’s arm before he could raise the glass to his lips. 

“We didn’t toast,” said John. “Bad luck to drink before toasting.”

“What do you want to toast to?” asked Sherlock. 

“Happy endings,” John answered firmly. 

Sherlock lifted his eyebrows in a brief flicker but merely tapped his glass against John’s and took a sip, looking back out in the direction of the ocean as it crashed gently and inexorably against the shore. He’d taken off his suit jacket, but he was still dressed in slim, dark trousers and a white shirt. John was sure the shirt was meant to be as perfectly tailored—as _obscenely_ tailored—as Sherlock’s clothing normally was, but it hung on him instead of hugging him and John’s heart ached a bit. 

“Sure you don’t want a bite to eat?” John tried wheedling again. 

“Come and give me an astronomy lesson,” said Sherlock, and walked down the verandah steps to the beach. 

John, surprised, stood and followed him. Sherlock settled on his back in the sand, his glass of wine propped at his head, and John winced at the state of his clothing. 

“You’re going to ruin that shirt,” John remarked. 

“There have been keener tragedies, John,” rejoined Sherlock calmly. 

John shrugged, thought _What the hell?_ and settled on his back on the sand next to Sherlock, their heads nearly touching. The stars overhead were a crowded carpet, not at all like the sky in London, almost terrifying in their uncountable number. John thought of Sherlock’s letter about Afghanistan, of Sherlock studying a foreign desert sky. John suddenly wanted to crowd that lonely memory out of Sherlock’s head, wanted to make sure that Sherlock only thought good things when he looked at the sky overhead. 

“Orion’s belt,” said John, and pointed. “Those three stars, there.”

Sherlock shifted even closer to him and frowned in the direction John was pointing. “Why are they Orion’s belt?”

“Well. They just are. The rest of Orion is somewhere up there.” Sherlock was right; they had already exhausted John’s knowledge of the constellations. 

“Who was Orion?” asked Sherlock. 

“I don’t know, actually. A hunter, I think. It’s a Greek myth.”

Sherlock was silent next to him for a long time, before saying, finally, “They looked up at all of this and they made up _stories_.”

“Who did?”

“The ancient Greeks. A hunter in the sky. They didn’t understand it, so they made up a story about a hunter in the sky. And they told everyone, ‘There is his belt.’ And it makes absolutely no sense but now, millennia later, you’re still talking about Orion and his belt. Everything we’ve learned about the stars, all of the truth that we know now, and yet there is still the story about the hunter in the sky.”

John sensed that Sherlock wasn’t talking about constellations or Greek myths at all, but he didn’t want to press the matter unless Sherlock was ready to discuss it. So John stayed silent and the ocean crashed against the shore and Orion’s belt shone overhead, the way it had done for millennia. 

“Tell me another constellation,” Sherlock said, eventually. 

“That’s it. All I know.”

Sherlock laughed. “You should put that in your blog. Make it even-handed.”

“Oh, you don’t think my blog is even-handed?”

“Do I have to mention ‘spectacularly ignorant’ again?”

“That was _one time_ , Sherlock.”

“‘Hyperactive, rude, arrogant, and a real pain in the behind,’” quoted Sherlock. 

“If it upset you so much, you shouldn’t have _memorized_ it,” pointed out John, exasperated. 

“I need to know what misconceptions people might have before meeting me.”

“More like you need to know if they know how you really are so that scary fake charm act you have can’t work on them.”

“If it’s charming, it can’t also be scary.”

“No, that’s a special feat only you can manage.” There was a moment of silence. John ventured, carefully, “I’m sorry I didn’t update it. It was just that I had no idea what to say. What could I possibly say…?”

“Of course,” said Sherlock, brusquely. “No, it makes perfect sense.”

John thought he shouldn’t have said anything. He cursed himself silently, staring up at the stars. 

Then Sherlock said, “It’s not the best photograph of you.”

John was confused. “Sorry?”

“The one on your blog. Not the best photograph of you.”

John didn’t know what to say to that, so he said nothing at all.


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter Two

John woke quickly, disoriented but with the clear knowledge that something was wrong. Something out-of-place had startled him out of sleep, and he reached for the gun by the bed quickly—

And Sherlock said, sounding breathless, “It’s me. It’s just me.”

John blinked, his vision adjusting to the darkness of the room, making out Sherlock’s silhouette just inside his bedroom door. “Jesus Christ,” he said, putting the gun back and digging his heels into his eyes as he leaned back against the headboard. His heart was pounding with adrenaline, and he took a deep breath to try to tamp down on it. “I could have shot you.”

“I’m sorry,” said Sherlock. 

He sounded strange, and John put his hands down slowly, suddenly worried that his initial instinct that something was wrong had been correct after all. “You okay?”

“Yes,” Sherlock answered. Too quickly, John thought. 

“What are you doing in here?” John asked, his mind cycling through possibilities. Was there someone else in the villa? Holding Sherlock hostage? Was that why Sherlock was behaving so oddly?

“I…” said Sherlock. “I… Sorry. I didn’t mean to disturb you.” He was speaking rapidly now, his words pouring out in a rush. “I didn’t think you’d wake up. I mean, you were sleeping so soundly, and I was just going to… Sorry. I’m sorry. Go back to sleep.”

“Okay,” said John, confused, watching Sherlock’s silhouette leave his bedroom. What the hell had that been about? John wondered, as he settled himself back down into bed. 

Then Sherlock came back into the bedroom. “It’s just… Do you mind if I…just sit here for a little while?”

“Sit where?” asked John, confused, sitting up again. 

“Here at the desk.” John heard the room’s desk chair scrape out. 

“Sherlock,” began John, in exasperation, leaning over and turning on the bedside light. Sherlock flinched and squeezed his eyes shut, and John stared across at him, startled. Because Sherlock was trembling uncontrollably, John could tell even from the distance they were at. “Sherlock,” John said again, realizing. 

“I’m fine,” said Sherlock, automatically, without opening his eyes, and John knew now why he’d been speaking so oddly, he was trying not to betray the chattering of his teeth. 

And John knew, so well, how miserable it was to wake up from a nightmare into a full-blown panic attack. He leaned over and turned off the light and said, lightly, “Don’t be an idiot. Come and get into bed.”

It was a testament to how shaken Sherlock was that he bounded over immediately, crawling onto the other side of John’s bed, on top of the thin bedspread. 

“You can get under the covers,” John told him. 

“I’m not cold,” said Sherlock, and John believed him. He might have been shivering, but John knew he probably felt claustrophobically warm. “I thought… I just thought…that you wouldn’t mind…if I…”

Sherlock was speaking in disconnected gulps, and John interrupted, softly, “Sherlock. Take a deep breath, love.” He heard Sherlock obey. “Okay, hold it. Now let it out slowly. Do it again. And again.” John talked him through five deep, slow breaths, and then said, “Better?” He could tell it was already because Sherlock had stopped shuddering. 

There was a long period of silence before Sherlock said, calmly, “My pulse is back to normal. Thank you.”

Ah, thought John, he’d been taking his own pulse. “I don’t mind. You’re not alone anymore. That’s the point, right? Now go back to sleep.”

Sherlock laughed, harshly and without humor. “I really don’t want to go back to sleep.”

“Okay, then,” said John, and promptly got out of bed. 

“What are you doing?” asked Sherlock, sounding shocked. 

John turned on the light in the lounge area and glanced back at Sherlock. “If you don’t want to go back to sleep, it does you no good to lay in bed and brood about the nightmare. So. Get up. We’ll do something else.”

“But…But you’re tired. You were sleeping,” protested Sherlock. 

“I’ll survive. I used to be a soldier. And a doctor. You may be the champion of surviving on little sleep, but I bet I could medal.” John busied himself in the kitchen, frowning at the tea they’d been provided. 

“You’re going to make tea?” Sherlock had at least got out of bed and was now standing in the bedroom doorway. 

“Yes. Do you want some? We didn’t stop for milk, so you’ll have to have it black.”

“That’s fine.”

“Good.” John turned away, losing himself in the ritual of the tea-making. When he was finished, he found Sherlock sitting at the dining table, watching him closely. “Come over to the sofa,” said John, carrying the tea over there. Sherlock obeyed, and John turned on the television. 

“Telly?” said Sherlock, incredulously. “We’re going to watch telly?”

“Yes. I’m looking forward to some quiet time, so I’m not going in search of a crime to keep your mind busy. So, shopping network. An insomniac’s best friend.”

Sherlock regarded the television screen dubiously. “Well, _she_ was clearly shagging the director.”

John smiled and looked from Sherlock’s profile to the television. “Of course she was.”

“What is that awful thing they’re attempting to sell, anyway? Oh, she was shagging that bloke, too.”

“She got around.”

“Mmm. And she’s been married three times. Is that stupidity or optimism, do you think?”

John chuckled. Sherlock already sounded much better. Shopping networks, John thought, could be magic. “I choose to believe it’s optimism.”

“Or maybe optimism is just a kind word for stupidity,” mused Sherlock. 

“It’s not,” John said, firmly. “It’s really not.”

Sherlock turned to face him fully, propping an elbow on the back of the sofa and cupping his tea in his other hand. “Why didn’t you ever get married?”

They had never discussed this before, and it seemed like an odd conversational topic for Sherlock to choose, but John went with it. “Never met the right woman.”

“Is there any such thing? You must have had your pick of women, there was no one close enough to be right?”

“Well, what about you?” countered John.

Sherlock looked perplexed. “What about me?”

“Why didn’t you ever get married?”

“Me? _Married_?”

“Why not?”

“Can you imagine me _married_?”

“I can, actually.”

“Really?” Sherlock cocked an eyebrow at him. “And what, exactly, is my wife like?”

“Who says you have a wife?”

“Ah. _Touché_. What, then, is my husband like?”

Sherlock was so irritated by this topic of conversation that he wasn’t even catching the undercurrent of John’s words. And John found that _adorable_. “He finds you delightful,” John said, warmly. 

Sherlock laughed. “Does he? Not an adjective usually applied to me.”

“Delightful,” repeated John, insistently. “Irreplaceable.”

“Now that I can believe,” agreed Sherlock, wryly, sipping his tea. And then he suddenly _looked_ at John, as if finally comprehending what John had been talking about all along. 

“There is such a thing as the right person,” said John, honestly. “I never got married because I was sure that there was. And I was right. I just had to wait long enough.”

Sherlock, after a second, cleared his throat and looked away, looking uncomfortable. He sipped his tea again. John turned back to the television, thinking Sherlock needed processing time. 

After a moment, Sherlock said, “You’re a terrible cook, but you’re the best at making tea.”

Which John knew was almost Sherlock’s way of saying, _I think I found the right person, too_. He said in response, “I’m glad you like it. I promise to always make you tea.”

“Even when I’ve upset you by putting slivers of pigs’ feet in the toaster?”

“Even then,” replied John, and then, “You’ve just filed that away in your mind palace, haven’t you?”

“I’ve put it in a display case in the front foyer,” rejoined Sherlock. 

John laughed and loved him more than anything else on the planet. 

“That man there primarily makes his money from pornography,” Sherlock said of the new presenter on the screen. 

And John loved him even more. 

***

The following morning John convinced Sherlock that they should breakfast at the hotel restaurant, and it was really quite pleasant. They were up before any of the other guests, and the little terrace was deserted. They sat there and watched the ocean, and John made Sherlock eat most of a croissant and refused to let him read the newspaper. As they were finishing, the concierge came up to them with a parcel. 

“As you requested, Mr. Kelly,” he said, handing it across to John. 

“Oh, yes, of course. Thank you.”

Sherlock’s eyes were sharp on the package. “What is that?”

“For you.” John nudged the package across. 

“When did you do this?” Sherlock asked, suspiciously. 

“Called down to the front desk for it while you were napping yesterday.”

Sherlock opened the box, pulling out a selection of true crime novels. John knew Sherlock had been recently traumatized but he also thought Sherlock would benefit from remembering who he had been, before all this had happened. 

“I thought you might like something to read. I can only depend upon you to watch terrible telly with me for so long, after all.”

Sherlock looked pleased, and John was glad he’d had the idea. “This is wonderful,” he announced, and then he promptly spent the entirety of the day lounging in the hammock on the veranda, reading. John cycled out to him cups of tea and pieces of fruit, and Sherlock ate and drank without speaking, and seemed much more like his old self. 

John spent the day watching terrible television and poking around on Sherlock’s laptop for places where he could learn to scuba dive. 

And he updated his blog. 

In the evening, he persuaded Sherlock to once again go to the hotel restaurant with him. It was more crowded, but Sherlock was in a good mood and spent the entire dinner telling John all about the books he had read so far and eating. John knew he was eating without thinking, but John was pleased all the same. 

When they were done, Sherlock said, “Your turn to pay, Mr. Kelly.”

“My turn? I’ve paid for everything so far. This entire holiday is on me, apparently. How’s it feel to be a kept man?”

“Brilliant,” Sherlock grinned at him, and then practically leapt out of his chair. “Pay the bill. I’ll be right back.”

John kept an eye on Sherlock as he darted into the lobby area, scrawling a fake signature on his fake credit card receipt. Sherlock returned in a few moments, looking like the cat who’d caught the canary. 

“What was that all about?”

“Nothing,” responded Sherlock, sounding like the very opposite of innocent. 

John smiled and decided to allow him whatever subterfuge he was planning. They walked slowly together back up the beach to their villa, and then John said, “No crime novels before bed. Terrible television instead.”

Sherlock sat curled into his corner of the sofa and complained about everything John chose to watch, and eventually John shut the television off and said, “Never mind. You’re cranky. Let’s go to bed.”

“I’m not _cranky_ ,” protested Sherlock. 

“Come on,” said John, standing and walking past him into the bathroom. When he emerged from the bathroom, Sherlock was still sitting on the sofa, and he looked uncertain. “Sherlock,” said John, patiently. “Whose bed would you rather share? Yours or mine?”

Sherlock’s fingers tapped against each other, and John thought of the violin that wasn’t there. “I…”

“I think you’ll do better if you fall asleep knowing that you’re not alone.”

Sherlock appeared to give this thought then agreed, slowly, “Okay.”

“Okay. Come to bed, then,” said John, and went into his bedroom, hoping that Sherlock would eventually follow. 

He did, hesitantly, and John pretended to be asleep so as not to alarm him as he crawled oh-so-carefully into the bed next to him. But John was not asleep. He was awake long after Sherlock’s breaths had evened out into sleep, staring at the lump next to him and thinking how he needed to make him feel _safe_ for the rest of his life. 

***

John woke to bright sunlight and Sherlock curled on his side next to him, sound asleep. John didn’t want to leave Sherlock to wake up to an empty bed, so he simply laid there watching him until he woke himself, his nose twitching into a yawn. 

“Good morning,” he slurred, sleepily, closing his eyes again. 

“Good morning,” John agreed. “I’m going to take a shower.”

“Mmm,” Sherlock responded. 

John dropped a kiss on the tip of Sherlock’s nose because he couldn’t help it. 

When John got out of the bathroom, Sherlock was back in his hammock. He’d snagged John’s sunglasses, so that all John could see was his own reflection when Sherlock looked at him and said, “Oh my God, what are you _wearing_?”

John glanced down. “Swimming trunks,” he said, because he thought that was obvious. It wasn’t as if it was a Speedo, for Christ’s sake. 

“I didn’t think there was anything in the world that you could have poorer taste in than jumpers. You have just proved me wrong.”

“Oh, stop it,” said John. “I had to buy them in a hurry in the airport in Frankfurt while we were switching planes, so it’s not like there was a great selection.”

Sherlock had put his book down on his chest, open so it was holding his page. “Why are you wearing those terrible things?”

“Because I’m going to the beach today.”

“Are you?” Sherlock sounded as if this were an astonishing thing to do, as if the idea of going to the beach had never occurred to him. 

“Yes. And you’re coming.”

“Am I?”

“Yes. The beach is only a few steps in that direction, and you can read just as well there. And I bought you trunks, too. I left them on the bed for you. So, get dressed and make sure you put on sun cream.” John, grabbing a banana that he’d snagged from the lobby the day before, took his towel and walked out to stake a claim on the sand in front of their villa. 

Sherlock arrived thirty minutes later, dressed in trousers and a white button-down shirt. The shirt was untucked. John supposed this was Sherlock’s concession to the activity. 

John squinted up at him. “What about the trunks?”

“I am not so depressed to appear in public in _those_ ,” responded Sherlock, indignantly. 

John laughed and settled his head back on the towel. “Fine. Suit yourself.” The sun was warm but not overpowering, and Sherlock might not be overly uncomfortable in what he was wearing. 

Sherlock fussed with his towel and eventually lowered himself to the sand, shifting about and grumbling to himself. John opened one eye and watched the operation, amused. Sherlock, John thought, really wasn’t a beach person. Maybe John had been cruel to tell him to come and lay on the sand with him. John was about to tell him to forget it and go back up to the hammock when Sherlock winced and carefully adjusted his position, favoring a spot low on his ribcage. 

“How is everything healing?” John asked. 

“Fine,” Sherlock bit out, still carefully settling himself. 

“Would you let me take a look later? Just to make sure?”

“It’s all fine.”

“You escaped from hospital long before you would have been discharged. At least let me look to make sure you don’t have some sort of festering infection.”

“I don’t have an infection, John. I’m not an idiot.”

John closed his eyes and said, confidently, “I’ll take a look tonight.” If he said it confidently, he thought Sherlock would feel less able to argue with him about it. 

***

Eventually they trailed back inside for showers before dinner. John emerged from his shower to find Sherlock perched on the veranda railing, looking out at the beach. He didn’t look like he was keeping watch; he looked more relaxed than that, and John was pleased. He walked over to stand beside Sherlock and look up and down the length of the beach. The sun was setting, and most people had straggled back inside to get ready for supper. 

“So that was a day at the beach,” remarked Sherlock, musingly. 

John grinned. “Did you like it?”

“Didn’t see the point.”

“Which is precisely the point.” John experimentally reached out and put his hand in Sherlock’s hair, because it was too tempting not to. Sherlock, to John’s relief, tipped his head against the pressure, seeming to invite more, and John ran his fingers lightly along Sherlock’s scalp. “What do you want to do for dinner?” asked John, casually, so as not to reveal how much his heart was pounding because he had a hand on Sherlock’s head. 

“Mmm,” said Sherlock, pressing back against John’s touch. “The restaurant.”

John wanted to suggest that they order in, but he also didn’t want to alarm Sherlock. And anyways, he was taking it as a good sign that Sherlock seemed less jumpy about being around others. Maybe John could convince him to leave the villa the next day. John thought he needed to try to slowly reintroduce the idea of normality to Sherlock. 

John forced himself to drop his hand from Sherlock’s hair. “Shall we go then?”

He expected Sherlock to protest that he wasn’t hungry, but Sherlock practically bounced his way down the beach. John was bemused until the concierge intercepted them and handed Sherlock a package. 

“For you,” Sherlock said, bright-eyed with anticipation as he handed it to John.

“Ah,” said John, smiling, and opened the box to a selection of books on astronomy. He laughed. 

“You need to be better at the constellations,” Sherlock told him. “And this will be something for you to do instead of watching that horrible television you insist on watching.”

“Thank you,” said John. 

“You like them,” announced Sherlock, not quite a question. 

“I love them,” John replied honestly. 

“Good.” Sherlock was fiddling with his napkin now, and John watched his eyes slide over the other occupants of the restaurant. 

_Tell me_ , John wanted to say. _Tell me everything that happened to you over the past six months so that I can fix it for you._

Instead John said, “Tell me what you read about today on the beach.”

And so Sherlock did.


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter Three

They finished a bottle of wine easily, and by the time they walked back up the beach to the villa John was feeling pleasantly buzzed and he assumed Sherlock was experiencing the same glow of affability. 

“Tell me a constellation,” Sherlock demanded in mock seriousness as they walked. 

“I told you the only one I know,” John protested. 

“But I bought you all those books!”

“I haven’t had time to read them yet!”

Sherlock was silent for a second. “Anyway, _you_ bought the books; I charged them to the room.”

John started laughing. He laughed so hard he had to stop walking. 

“What’s so funny?” asked Sherlock, looking uncertainly amused in response to John’s mirth. 

“You,” gasped John. “Buying me a gift with my own money. Only you would—” Still laughing, not really thinking, John reached for Sherlock’s shoulder, leaned against him just slightly, and Sherlock flinched, sliding away from him. John abruptly stopped laughing. 

“Sorry,” Sherlock said quickly. “It’s just a bit sore tonight.”

“Dislocated shoulder,” John recalled. “Sorry. I forgot—or I didn’t think—”

“It’s fine,” Sherlock insisted. “I’m fine. It’s perfectly normal for it still to be sore at this point.”

“Would you stay still?” John said, ignoring him, and reached forward to feel gingerly over Sherlock’s shoulder. 

“It isn’t still dislocated.”

“I’m just checking. That’s just the sort of mad thing you’d do, refuse to let someone set your shoulder for you. I don’t even want to ask whether you wore a sling at all.”

“I had other things to do—” Sherlock sucked in sudden breath as John purposely skimmed his hand lightly down his side. And not in pleasure, either, which John would have much preferred. 

“Okay. I’m checking all of this for you tonight.” 

“There really isn’t any need to—”

“You have forgotten how much you need someone to look after you and take care of you,” John interrupted him. 

“I don’t need that,” Sherlock denied, hollowly. 

“Yes, you do.” John slid his hand into Sherlock’s, threaded his fingers through Sherlock’s. There was a beat, and then Sherlock curled his fingers through John’s in response. John, encouraged, squeezed and pulled Sherlock up and into the villa. 

“On the sofa,” commanded John, disappearing into his bedroom to retrieve the basic medical supplies he’d brought with him. “I suppose you’ve been keeping the wound clean?”

“Of course,” said Sherlock, trying to sound offended but not quite getting there. He was sitting stiffly on the sofa, looking very uncomfortable. 

John regarded him. “All right,” he said briskly. “You know that if I’m going to check up on your progress you’re going to need to take your shirt off.”

Sherlock swallowed visibly and looked up at John. 

John tipped his head quizzically, because he’d tended to Sherlock’s wounds countless times before and there had never been this level of reluctance on Sherlock’s part. Was it because John had told Sherlock that he was in love with him? Was this experience now imbued with a sexual tint that it hadn’t held for Sherlock before? John could understand that, but John was also a professional who wasn’t about to ravish Sherlock because of the sight of his bare chest. Especially not when John was primarily concerned about the healing of a gunshot wound in that chest. 

John knelt in front of Sherlock on the sofa and said, carefully, “I am very quick, you know that. Let me have two minutes.”

Sherlock licked his lips and slowly began unbuttoning his shirt. John wished he had some excuse to listen to Sherlock’s heartbeat, just because he wanted to give his hands something to do and the stethoscope seemed like a good option. 

Sherlock’s chest was a collection of bruises in various stages of healing, and John was amazed that Sherlock didn’t spend more time wincing than he did. The sight of all of them made John’s fists clench, but he managed not to let loose the string of curses that he wanted to fling at whoever had done all of this. He focused steadfastly on the healing gunshot wound, which was not healing as cleanly as John’s had, no doubt because Sherlock had not received excellent medical care as soon as it had happened. John leaned forward, looking at the wound closely, but it didn’t seem to be infected, just…not pretty. It was going to leave a much nastier scar than John’s had. 

“How’s the rib?” John asked, striving for straightforwardness in his tone when his head was pounding with _I will kill every single person who laid a hand on you_. 

“How do you know so much about my medical condition?”

“I told you, I spoke to your Argentinian doctors. You should have let them take a little bit better care of you.”

“I hate doctors.”

“I know for a fact that’s not true.”

“You’re the exception. The only exception. And I only let you poke and prod because…”

John wanted to finish it with _Because you love me_. 

But Sherlock finished it himself, “Because I trust that you know what you’re doing. That’s not something I believe of any other doctor.”

Which was possibly a more astonishing compliment than Sherlock saying that he loved him. John momentarily looked up from his contemplation of Sherlock’s injuries. “Did you just call me more intelligent than all other doctors?”

Sherlock looked annoyed. “You already know that I think you’re cleverer than most other people.”

“No. I don’t know that. You’re always telling me what an idiot I am.”

Sherlock rolled his eyes. “You _are_ an idiot, for not seeing how much less of an idiot you are than everyone else.”

John didn’t quite know what to make of that, and he also didn’t know what it said about him that that sentence out of Sherlock Holmes made him feel curiously close to kissing him. So John just said, brusquely, “Lean forward so I can check on the exit wound.”

Sherlock froze but was a moment too late with his resistance. 

“John—” he started, but John had already nudged him forward, and John had been doing such a good job of reining in his reactions, but he couldn’t help the fact that he breathed out, “Jesus Christ.”

Sherlock stiffened and tried to pull away. “John—”

“No.” John pressed firmly, knowing it was probably painful to the state of Sherlock’s bruises and not caring, because he had to _see_. Sherlock’s back was littered with scars. Burns. Cuts. Tough little indentations where entire chunks of skin were missing. John stopped breathing, his gaze going red with rage, and he wanted his gun. He wanted his gun, and he wanted to get up, and he wanted to go back to Argentina, or Afghanistan, or Moscow, or France, or wherever the _fuck_ someone had done this to _his Sherlock_. 

“John,” said Sherlock, his voice sounding very far away, and very uncertain, and very _broken_.

_Why didn’t you tell me?_ John wanted to shout at him. And: _Who did this to you?_ And: _What have you been doing for the past six months?_

John didn’t shout. John knew shouting would be the least productive thing he could do. Sherlock had very clearly been tortured, probably by someone very clever who had known exactly what he was doing, and Sherlock did not need him to shout at him over it. John closed his eyes and took a deep breath. No wonder Sherlock had had a small army’s supply of pain medication with him. _Whoever you are_ , he thought, _I am going to find you and put a bullet in your skull_. 

John opened his eyes. Sherlock had leaned forward, hands grasping for his shirt, but John stilled him by leaning forward and kissing the nearest scar, soft and gentle and tender. And then the next one, and the next one. _You think that you did this for me_ , John said with every kiss, _and I love you for it. I love you, I love you, I love you_. Sherlock was very still, barely daring to breathe. John kissed every scar, systematically, and when he was done he wrapped his arms around Sherlock, pressing up against him. He nosed his way into the hair on the nape of Sherlock’s neck, planted a shaky kiss there, leaned his forehead against the back of Sherlock’s skull, closed his eyes, and took unsteady breath after unsteady breath. 

“It’s fine,” Sherlock said, eventually, in a whisper. “I’m fine.”

“Yes,” John agreed, his whisper fierce in response, his arms tightening around Sherlock to hold him even closer. “You are. You’re fine. Because I’ve got you now and I will never let you go. Do you hear me?”

Sherlock took a deep shuddering breath, trembling in John’s arms. 

John wasn’t sure how long they stayed like that. It was until Sherlock stopped shaking and relaxed against him. It was until John’s heart stopped pounding with terror and rage. John brushed one last kiss over Sherlock’s neck and then drew fully away. 

“No infection,” he said, amazed by how doctorly his voice sounded. 

Sherlock had practically whipped his shirt back on as soon as John had moved away, was buttoning it up swiftly, his eyes on his fingers. “I’ll survive?” he asked, sounding half-wry and half-serious. 

“You’ll thrive,” John told him, and stood and walked into the bathroom and splashed cold water onto his face. Then he turned on the shower and pretended to take one, when he really just sat with his back against the bathroom door, his eyes closed, doing deep-breathing exercises and forcing his hands to stay unclenched. He felt helpless with anger. And he longed to react by smothering Sherlock with affection, by wrapping him in cotton wool and never letting him out of his sight. That might be working here on Anguilla but he had to stop that if Sherlock was ever to fully recover, he had to learn to let go of him a little bit, and he had no idea how he was going to do it. 

He finally turned the shower off, waited an appropriate amount of time for falsified drying off purposes, and walked back out into the lounge area. Sherlock was no longer in it, and John walked into the bedroom and stripped out of his clothing, leaving himself in boxer shorts and a T-shirt, making his pretend shower a little more believable. 

He found Sherlock sitting on the steps of the veranda. John hesitated, so it was Sherlock who spoke first. 

“Orion’s shoulders,” he said, pointing. “There and there. I found them for you. He is shooting an arrow.”

“Oh.” John looked up at the night sky, not seeing Orion’s shoulders and not really caring. “Thank you.” There was a moment of silence. “Are you coming to bed?”

“In a minute,” said Sherlock. 

John left him there. He assumed that “in a minute” had meant “no, never,” but Sherlock crawled into the bed with him not much later. Or maybe it was an hour later. John had lost all sense of time. It wasn’t like he was going to sleep that night anyway. 

Sherlock knew he wasn’t asleep. “I don’t want to talk about it,” he said. 

“I’m not going to make you.”

“Never,” Sherlock asserted, flatly. “I never want to talk about it.”

“It’s all fine,” John said. He wasn’t sure if he meant it—he thought Sherlock probably needed to talk about it—but he wasn’t going to force it while everything was still so raw. 

“That’s what you said to me the night you told me you were unattached.”

“What night was that?”

“That first night at Angelo’s. You asked if I had a boyfriend. You said it was all fine.”

“It _is_ all fine.” John paused. “You thought I was asking you out that night. And yet you warned me off.”

Sherlock heard the question John didn’t voice. “Because you were terrifying. You _terrified_ me. I’ve never met anyone I wanted in my life as much as I want you. So even as I was trying to keep you, I was pushing you away at the same time. It was stupid. I’m an idiot. But it turned out that you were straight, so it was a better alternative than giving the impression that I wanted to date you, which would have truly scared you off. It wasn’t as much of a mess as it could have been.”

“It wasn’t a mess,” said John, softly. “We got here eventually.”

Sherlock picked up John’s hand in the darkness, clasped it loosely between both of his own. “Do you mind?” he asked uncertainly. 

“No,” answered John. “Not at all.”

“It’s all fine?” Sherlock’s voice was laced with amusement. 

John smiled into the darkness in response. “Better than fine, Sherlock.” John shifted closer to Sherlock, and after a moment he felt Sherlock tip his head toward him, edge a bit closer in response. John closed his eyes and breathed with Sherlock until the sun rose. 

***

John fell asleep sometime around dawn. So that was when Sherlock lifted the hand still clasped between his own and pressed a fervent kiss to the center of its palm, when Sherlock turned more fully toward John and kissed his forehead. John snuffled at the contact but did not wake, and Sherlock looked at him and felt the peculiar pain in his chest that he knew was where the term _heartache_ had come from. There was nothing wrong with Sherlock’s heart. It was doing its job quite admirably. But looking at John made Sherlock feel like his heart was too big for his chest. No wonder people had concluded that the heart was the source of feelings of affection. Sherlock had never understood why that fallacy had been so widely held until he had fallen in love with John. 

In London, in Baker Street, Sherlock had learned to push past the feeling in his chest. It happened almost every time he looked at John, but he had to stop thinking about it in order to keep himself moving. He was out of practice with it now. When he looked at John and the world stopped around him and his heart ballooned in his chest, he could no longer quite manage to keep his breathing even. And it was even worse now that John was behaving the way he was. Sherlock thought of John carefully and silently pressing kisses over Sherlock’s back. Sherlock did not know well what his back looked like since he couldn’t see it without effort and he had not wanted to make the effort to see the lingering evidence. He hadn’t wanted the reminder. But he could guess it wasn’t pretty, and John’s reaction had both confirmed that and made it entirely irrelevant, all at the same time. Such a fierce and furious ball of contradictions, his John. Sherlock closed his eyes to stop from feeling dizzy over how much he loved him. 

And maybe John loved him back. Maybe he did. Maybe they could move past everything that had happened, could go back to being John and Sherlock, only better, hand-in-hand in Regent’s Park, the way Sherlock had always wanted. Sherlock reached into his pocket and pulled out the letter John had slid under the bedroom door in Siberia, creased and worn with the number of times Sherlock had re-read it. He read it again, even though he had it memorized, then he replaced it in his pocket and rolled out of bed. 

He’d wallowed in this long enough, he told himself firmly. Time to move on. Life was there to be lived. Life with _John_. And they seemed relatively safe. Sherlock had seen nothing suspicious the whole time they’d been there, no sign of any of Moriarty’s web. Maybe they really did believe he’d been finished off during his daring escape in Argentina. 

That would be temporary, of course. If Sherlock ever resumed his identity they would know immediately, they would come after him and they would come after John, and Sherlock could not have that. 

So they wouldn’t go home. John would stay with him, Sherlock thought. Sherlock hoped. If they had to live the rest of their lives on the run, Sherlock didn’t think John would hesitate. He hoped John wouldn’t hesitate. 

Sherlock sat on the veranda with one of John’s constellation books open on his lap, frowning out at the ocean and considering it. Could he ask it of John? Could he _not_ ask it of John? He couldn’t imagine being able to make himself leave John again. But what if John left him? What if John loved the Sherlock he had had in London, not the Sherlock he had now? Sherlock still couldn’t comprehend the idea that John had loved him in London. If he’d been that clueless about it then, what made him think he’d be able to clarify it now, when he was much the worse for wear? 

John came out onto the veranda, soft with sleep, and dropped onto the bench next to Sherlock, setting his head casually against Sherlock’s shoulder as he yawned. “Morning.”

Sherlock sat very still, not wanting to dislodge John against him. John had been more physically affectionate lately, and Sherlock was enjoying it without being quite comfortable enough to show exactly how much he was enjoying it. “Good morning. You should have slept later, it’s still quite early.”

“You were up,” John said by way of explanation. 

Sherlock bristled a little. “You don’t need to… _coddle_ me.”

“I’m not coddling you,” John denied. “The bed was cold without you. I couldn’t fall back to sleep.”

Sherlock debated whether or not he believed that explanation. “Oh,” he said, finally. “I’m sorry. Would you like me to go back to bed?”

“No. We may as well get the day started. I’ve got a busy day of constellation-learning ahead of me.”

“I thought we’d go into town today,” said Sherlock, forming the words carefully. 

There was a moment of silence. “Really?”

“Yes. We need milk. Do you know how much terrible black tea I’ve drunk in the past six months? No more.”

Another moment of silence. “I can run out and get us milk.”

“Out of the question,” said Sherlock. 

John lifted his head from Sherlock’s shoulder, shifting so he was facing him on the bench. “Sherlock—”

“I am not letting you out of my _sight_ , John Watson,” Sherlock cut him off. 

John studied his face closely, like he was a bloody invalid who needed special treatment and Sherlock _hated_ that. Then John nodded. “But don’t expect me to know any new constellations if I don’t get time to study today,” John warned him. 

Sherlock smiled, and his heart pressed against his ribcage again, but that was good, that meant all was right with his world. 

***

John thought Sherlock might be pushing himself with the town excursion, but John also thought that Sherlock was someone who always pushed himself, and maybe it would be good for him to get back to that. Sherlock had been uncharacteristically _still_ ever since John had found him in Siberia. There had been flashes of the old Sherlock, flashes of enthusiasm and interest in things, bursts of excited monologues that John listened to with the same indulgence he remembered from 221B. But, on the whole, Sherlock had been reserved and cautious and uncertain, three adjectives John would never have applied to Sherlock before. So maybe Sherlock needed to throw a little bit of caution to the wind and take a risk. Maybe it would exhilarate him, remind of who he was. 

While Sherlock was showering, John turned his mobile on. He ignored all the texts and voicemails and instead composed a single new text to Mycroft. _We’re both still fine. If you’re keeping an eye on us and happen to run into any of M’s network, kill them. Slowly._

Later, when Sherlock got out of the shower, John held up the car keys and Sherlock took them, and John thought that was already a step in a familiar direction. As Sherlock drove he kept up a running commentary for John about all the things the other drivers on the road were doing incorrectly, and John watched him and felt thoroughly incapable of wiping away the wide smile he knew was plastered over his face. 

“What?” Sherlock finally asked, glancing at John briefly. 

“You’re so gorgeous,” John said, which wasn’t quite what he had been thinking but was nonetheless true. 

Sherlock’s cheeks turned pink. And they had already been a bit pink from the beach the day before. 

The town was full of tourist trap shops. Sherlock wandered through them, delightedly proclaiming how awful everything was. John would have, under any other circumstances, tried to shush him, humiliated, but he had a very hard time feeling anything other than bliss at how _normal_ it all felt. Every so often Sherlock straightened abruptly and turned back to look more closely in a direction John hadn’t noticed, and John sensed that Sherlock never really entirely lost the tension that had crept over him upon leaving the villa, but on the whole he thought that Sherlock was enjoying himself. 

And they stopped to get milk. 

“Any other requests for anything I could cook for you?” John asked, as they walked up and down the crowded aisles of the small supermarket. They had never done the food shopping together before, which made this very odd yet somehow cozily domestic. 

“Hobnobs!” exclaimed Sherlock, grabbing several boxes off the shelves. 

“Okay, we should probably also buy things that have actual nutritional value.”

“Ugh, nutrition, nutrition’s boring,” said Sherlock. “Anyway, we are on holiday. Look, your favorite.” Sherlock added several boxes of Jaffa Cakes to their trolley. 

“So you do know those are my favorite,” remarked John. “And yet you never had any qualms about eating the last one.”

“Oh, John, it wasn’t as if it was the last Jaffa Cake in the _entire world_ ,” replied Sherlock, pausing before a vast display of fresh-squeezed juices. “We should make our own tropical drinks.”

“Okay,” said John, agreeably. 

Sherlock began grabbing indiscriminately at juices. “We will _experiment_.”

John had never known Sherlock to go so long without an experiment. He was relieved that one was on the horizon. “I missed you so much,” John blurted out, suddenly. 

Sherlock, in the process of depositing guava juice into the trolley, froze. 

There was an awkward silence. John wondered wildly if he should apologize, take it back, say something more. 

Then Sherlock straightened and gave him a small smile and said, “I missed you, too.”


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter Four

“Oh my God,” said John after his third Sherlock-created tropical cocktail. “What was _in_ those drinks?”

“I don’t remember. I took notes, but they’re…” Sherlock waved his arm about in the air and then nudged John’s arm. “Tell me a constellation.”

“I can’t tell you a constellation—the sky is _spinning_.”

“The Earth turns, John. That’s why we have night and day,” Sherlock told him, seriously. 

“This isn’t the Earth turning. This is whatever lethal thing you put in those drinks.”

“I didn’t poison them. I would never poison you. Never you, never you, never you…” Sherlock trailed off, turning clumsily toward John and mumbling the words into the skin of John’s neck, nuzzling at him. 

Sherlock was clearly drunk, thought John. Sherlock would never do something like that if he wasn’t drunk. How much _alcohol_ had been in those drinks? John had tasted almost none, which was how he’d so quickly sucked down three of them. He’d clearly been mistaken on that point. Which was why, even though he was thinking _Sherlock is drunk, push him away_ , instead he reached out an arm and pulled Sherlock closer. 

Sherlock complied, sprawling heavily over John, breathing words over John’s face. “Mmm, lovely, you’re lovely, and I love you. I’d keep you alive forever. Will you stay alive forever? For me?”

“I’ll try,” said John, good-naturedly, and then, “You’re drunk.”

“Am I?” Sherlock lifted his head, frowned down at John. “I might be, actually. My calculations were wrong. I must have been drunk.”

“You were drinking before you started serving me?”

“Of course. How was I to know if they were good otherwise?”

“How many of those drinks did you have?”

“Five. Or maybe six.”

“Jesus, I need to get some water in you.”

“We could go swimming,” suggested Sherlock. 

“Absolutely not,” said John, firmly. 

“You’re so boring,” Sherlock accused, and rubbed his head against John’s chest. “Yet so fascinating. My John, my John, my John. Forever and ever and ever.” Sherlock sounded drowsily content then sighed suddenly. “I wish you would love me back.”

The sky stopped spinning over John’s head. “I do love you,” he said. 

“I want your heart,” murmured Sherlock. “I want it to be mine.”

“It is yours. Sherlock.” John tugged at him, managing to get Sherlock to lift his head to look at him. “I love you. I do.”

Sherlock smiled down at him, all drunken indulgence. “Do you?”

“Yes.” John cupped his hands around Sherlock’s face. “I mean it. I love you.”

“You do,” Sherlock decided. “You gave me a list.”

“The letter?”

“Yes. I have it memorized. How did I live without you?” Sherlock asked the question in amazement. 

“I think you did it the same way I lived without you. Which is to say: not very well.”

“I missed you,” said Sherlock, settling his head back down on John’s chest with a little snuggle. “I missed you so much. I told you, though. In the letters. I told you. I missed you. Stay with me forever. John, John, my John…” Sherlock’s voice trailed off. 

“I will,” John promised, stroking his hands through Sherlock’s hair. “I will stay with you forever.”

John thought Sherlock had fallen asleep, and John was thinking how he needed to wake him up and get him up to the house and a bit rehydrated, but then Sherlock said, abruptly, “Your name is so ridiculous.”

“My name?”

“John. John. John. It’s a ridiculous name.”

“Says the person named Sherlock.”

“John, John, John,” chanted Sherlock, sleepily. “From the Hebrew Yochanan, meaning graced by Yahweh. In Greek, Ioannes. And in Latin, Ioannes. It was originally a nickname, you know. For the Hebrew name Yehochanan. Yahweh is generous. Hebrew to Greek to Latin, but none of them knew that someday there would be _you_. John.”

John didn’t know what to say, so he said nothing. 

“I bet an ancient Greek named Ioannes was the one who first named Orion’s belt,” continued Sherlock, after a moment. 

John chuckled. “I bet you’re right.”

“I’m always right. I was right about you the moment I met you. Him, I thought. I’ve been waiting my whole life for him. And I was right.”

“You’re very drunk,” said John, around the catch in his throat. “You should probably stop talking.”

“I tried to impress you. With the Afghanistan or Iraq. Did I impress you?”

“It was the hottest thing I’d ever seen,” John answered, honestly. 

Sherlock hummed contentedly. “I knew you would like that. I wanted to be the most impressive person you’d ever met.”

“You were. You are.”

“I miss London,” said Sherlock. “I miss Baker Street.”

John’s heart clenched. “Then let’s go home.”

“Not yet. Can’t. Must keep you safe.”

“I’m fine, Sherlock.”

“Most precious thing. _Most_ precious thing. You are my most precious thing.”

“Good,” said John, tightly, “because you’re mine.”

Sherlock lifted his head and gave John the most dazzling smile. “Am I?”

Sherlock looked pleasantly surprised, which made John feel like crying. How could Sherlock not _know_ this? “Of course you are,” said John. 

“ _Thank_ you,” said Sherlock, delighted, and kissed the bridge of John’s nose. “You have an adorable nose. It’s a John nose. John nose: Ioannes nasus.” Sherlock kissed the tip of it.

John decided he had to get Sherlock inside before Sherlock _killed_ him with all of this. “All right,” he said, making sure he sounded jovial. “Let’s get you inside. You need to drink some water and then you need to go to sleep.”

Sherlock rolled off of him agreeably, stretched, and stood. “I think the drinks were _wonderful_ ,” he announced, walking unsteadily in the sand up to the villa. “A success.”

“Well, they were certainly impressive, that’s for sure.”

Sherlock paused in the villa’s doorway. “Impressive,” he said, turning to John. “Good. I like to impress you.” He swooped in for a quick and sudden kiss, a sloppy peck over John’s mouth that was over before John had quite registered it. 

“You always impress me,” John said, and nudged him into the villa. 

“Good. Good, good, good,” said Sherlock, and walked of his own accord into the bedroom. 

John filled a glass with water and carried it into the bedroom, where Sherlock was sprawled across the entire bed. 

“You should drink some water,” said John.

“Good,” said Sherlock again, when John had placed the water on the bedside table, and then he reached out and dragged John into the bed with him. 

“I’m serious about the water.”

“I hate to be alone. I was alone so much. And I’ve always hated it. I’ve always been so alone. Until there was you. And I wasn’t lonely anymore. I hate being lonely.”

“I know,” said John, because he did. “You’re not alone. I’m here.”

Sherlock opened one eye. “Did you say I have your heart?”

“Yes. You do.”

Sherlock closed his eye. “I’m going to put it in formaldehyde,” he said, and then promptly started snoring. 

“How utterly romantic,” said John, and kissed Sherlock’s cheek. 

***

Sherlock snored all night. John thought he should find it endearing, but really it drove him a little crazy so that eventually he just _had_ to get away from it. He slid out of bed and wrote Sherlock a note and went for a jog on the beach, being careful to keep the villa in sight at all times. 

***

Sherlock woke feeling terrible. His head was pounding, his tongue felt too big for his mouth, and his stomach was in complete revolt. Sherlock had woken in other places in the last six months feeling much worse than this. However, in those places he had been completely alone. Or at least without allies. Now, though, he had John. John. 

“John,” he said. And, when he got no answer, summoned the strength to call more loudly, “John.” 

There was no response. At all. No sound in the villa. Nothing but the crashing waves from the beach. 

Sherlock forgot all about feeling terrible. He sat up like a shot, his heart pounding its way out of his chest. “John?” he called, trying to keep his panic under control. “John!” Sherlock scrambled out of the bed. John was not in the villa. _John was not in the villa_. Tearing his hands through his hair, Sherlock walked out onto the veranda, and there was John, standing by the ocean, facing the villa. He lifted a hand in greeting when he saw Sherlock. 

Sherlock darted down the stairs and dashed across the sand and collided into him. John staggered backward, off-balance, and Sherlock felt the ocean they’d been pushed a few steps into licking at their feet. 

“What the—” John started. 

And then Sherlock kissed him. And it was gross, because Sherlock’s mouth was gross, and Sherlock _felt_ gross, but he couldn’t help it, he needed to kiss John, he needed to crawl into him and make sure he never left him ever again. And John kissed him back, as frantically as he was being kissed. 

They stumbled, going down into the sand with a splash, and they were soaking wet and John’s face tasted of salt as Sherlock dotted kisses over it. Sherlock leaned down and sucked sea water off John’s neck. 

John’s hips bucked and he swore and said, “Sherlock, _slow down_.”

“You left,” said Sherlock desperately, keeping John pinned underneath him. “You left and I couldn’t _bear_ it.”

John looked up at him, clearly perplexed. “When did I leave you? Did you have a nightmare?”

“ _This morning_ ,” Sherlock bit out at him. “When I woke up. You weren’t there. I called for you, and _you weren’t there_.”

“I left you a note.”

“I didn’t see it. I didn’t see _you_.”

“Okay,” said John, and pushed his hands through Sherlock’s hair. “Okay. I’m sorry. I’m sorry, love. Do you hear me? I’m not leaving. I’m not. I am right here. I promised you I would be right here. I will not break that promise.”

Sherlock leaned his head down into the curve of John’s shoulder, tried to focus on the soothing motion of John’s hands through his hair. He realized he was shaking against him and recognized that as the sudden loss of the adrenaline. “What if you can’t _help_ it?” He thought he sounded like a wailing child. 

“I am John Watson. I invaded Afghanistan, remember?”

Sherlock choked out a startled laugh. John kept smoothing at Sherlock’s hair, and slowly Sherlock started breathing again. 

He felt John drop a kiss in his hair. “I’m so sorry, love,” he murmured. “I’m so sorry.”

“This is how I love you,” Sherlock said, shakily. “Do you see? I can’t let myself… If I let myself…”

“Let yourself,” whispered John. “I will not let you shatter. I _promise_.”

Sherlock lifted his head so he could look down at John. “I could not let anything happen to you. That’s why I did what I did.”

“I know,” said John. 

“You were angry when you found out.”

“I was furious.”

“Are you still?”

“No. I’m thrilled, because we get a second chance. _I_ get a second chance to do it right this time. To make sure you understand how _beloved_ you are. You saved my life, Sherlock. Let me save you right back.” 

Sherlock regarded him for a moment before rolling off of him and settling next to him, arms overlapping, heads close together. He looked at the bright blue sky overhead. He said, “I was looking for you to tell you that I feel _terrible_.”

“Of course you do,” John chuckled, and kissed Sherlock’s temple, and it felt like the beginning of everything. 

*****

He should not have left him alone that morning. That much was devastatingly clear and John was furious with himself for not realizing how fragile Sherlock still was. He should have _known_ how much Sherlock would panic to find the villa empty. Wasn’t he trying to convince Sherlock that he wasn’t going to leave? Wasn’t going to break his heart? And he had undone all of the progress he’d made with one thoughtless jog on the beach. 

Not that it was practical that he and Sherlock spend every minute of the rest of their lives in sight of each other. Of course not. John was aware of that. He just should have realized that Sherlock had been through a lot lately, starting with having to fake his own suicide, and that wasn’t all going to be fixed by a few days of sun and sand. 

“I overreacted this morning.”

John glanced up at him, from where he had emerged, freshly showered and dressed and looking much better than he had before. Sherlock had spent the entire day sprawled in bed complaining about how terrible he felt. John wasn’t sure if he really felt that terrible or had just wanted to do something that seemed normal. Either way, John was happy to be given something useful to do, and he spent the day calling to Sherlock to drink more water in increasingly exasperatedly affectionate tones, while he sprawled on the sofa reading his astronomy books. 

Eventually, as the afternoon had worn on, John had convinced Sherlock to take a shower. By “convinced” he meant that he had turned the shower on, practically dragged Sherlock into the bathroom, and closed the door on him. Apparently Sherlock had taken the hint. 

John shook his head a bit, said, “Not at all,” and then, “Are you feeling better?”

“You did leave me a note.” Sherlock held it up. “I didn’t see it. _I_ didn’t see it.”

“Sherlock, don’t worry about it.”

“No, I have to worry about it.” Sherlock sat on the veranda’s railing, opposite where John was perched on it, and drew his legs up, balancing effortlessly. “I cannot panic every time you leave my sight. That was _ridiculous_.” Sherlock sounded disgusted with himself. 

“Look,” said John. “I know you don’t want to talk about it, and that’s fine, but you’ve clearly been through a lot lately and you can’t expect yourself to—”

“You went through a lot. In Afghanistan.”

“Right. And do you know how long it took me to stop having panic attacks?”

“How long?”

“I still have them.”

“ _Still_?” Sherlock looked appalled. 

“I’m sure you’ll be able to get over the panic attacks more successfully than I—”

“I don’t care about that. When were you having panic attacks? Why didn’t you tell me? How did I not _notice_?”

John licked his lips and looked out at the ocean and decided, _What the hell_. It wasn’t like he could effectively lie to Sherlock anyway. He looked back at him. “They went away when I met you. It seemed like, now that I had something real to panic about, I didn’t need panic attacks anymore. They came back when you…died.”

Sherlock rested his chin on his updrawn knees and looked interested. “Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why would they have come back to you after I left?”

“Are you seriously asking me that question? Did you really think that you could do what you did and have _no_ effect on the state of my mind?”

“I thought…” Sherlock looked confused. “I thought you would grieve, of course you would grieve, but—”

“Sherlock,” John cut in, and he could hear his voice trembling with everything he had not yet let himself be angry at Sherlock for. “You didn’t just die. It wasn’t a car accident or an illness or even some senseless act of violence. It wasn’t anything that I could blame on outside forces. You _killed_ yourself, and you did it in front of me. Worse than that, you _forced_ me to _watch_. You _phoned_ me just to make sure I’d have a front-row seat when you flung yourself off a roof and spilled your brains all over the pavement. You were everything worthwhile in my life, Sherlock, you were everything in the world to me, and you took yourself away from me, in front of me, and you made sure that I knew that I _was standing right there and didn’t stop it_.” John took a sudden deep breath, realizing he hadn’t been breathing enough during that whole speech, and scrubbed his hands over his face. 

“I didn’t…” said Sherlock, after a moment. “You couldn’t have stopped it. That was the point. That you couldn’t have stopped it.”

“I didn’t know it was some ridiculous piece of theater, Sherlock,” John said, into the hands still covering his face. “I thought it was real. I thought all of it was real. You died, and I let you, and how did you think that wouldn’t send me careening off the deep end? We can’t talk about this. I think we shouldn’t talk about this.” John took another deep breath and dropped his hands, collecting himself. He looked composedly across at Sherlock. “The Big Dipper,” he said. “I think I’ve worked out where it is.”

“Because you’re stronger than me,” Sherlock said. “You’ve always been stronger than me. And I didn’t know how you felt about me. How could I have known? _You_ didn’t even know.”

“I don’t want to talk about this,” John repeated. “If you make me talk about my last six months, I’m going to make you talk about your last six months.”

Sherlock set his jaw. “That’s completely unfair considering that you got an entire _diary_ of my last six months in the form of my letters when I don’t know anything about what you’ve been doing.”

“I went out and met a woman and got engaged. What the _sodding hell_ do you think I spent the last six months doing?”

“I don’t know,” snapped Sherlock. “You never updated your blog.”

“And your letters never said anything about being tortured.”

“Oh, yes, because that’s definitely the sort of thing you put in a letter. ‘Sorry it’s been a while since I last wrote, darling, I was chained to this chair in a dank little garage in some town in Eastern Europe whose name I’ve now deleted because it turns out I’d rather not remember being systematically burned with my own cigarettes. Ah, well, I guess that’s just an opportunity for you to say that you told me to quit smoking.’”

“You didn’t think you were ever sending me those letters,” John pointed out. 

“I was trying to forget it, John! That isn’t how it works, you know! You don’t _write down_ the things you’re trying to delete. You don’t—” Sherlock cut himself off with a sound of frustration. “Anyway, it didn’t work. Are you happy now? It didn’t work. I couldn’t delete any of it, everything about my deletion process shut down over the past six months. I couldn’t delete you, and I couldn’t delete the rest of it, and all those letters when I told you I couldn’t sleep, did you never wonder _why_ I couldn’t sleep? Because I could not delete any of it and I had to keep re-living it again, and again, and again, and I just wanted it to stop, I just wanted to forget, and I couldn’t forget, I couldn’t—” Sherlock looked away abruptly, out toward the ocean. “I wanted to dream of you. Whenever I couldn’t put sleep off any longer, I would lie in bed and close my eyes and I would go over every detail of your face. I would take out every single treasure related to you in my mind palace, and I would study them all systematically, and I would smile and remember and it would almost be like being home. But the problem was that I did the same thing when they were— I had the same avoidance techniques, I would retreat back into you, and you were linked, in my head, and I would try to fall asleep focused on you, so I would dream of you, I wanted so desperately to dream of you, and I didn’t. I never did.”

“I dreamt of you every night,” John said quietly, after a moment. 

Sherlock looked at him in evident surprise. “Did you?”

“Falling off a building in front of me. Your blood on my hands. Your eyes not seeing me. Yes. Every night.” He didn’t think he said it to be vindictive. He said it because he needed Sherlock to _know_ , how much he had been missed, how John had spent the previous six months, how they should never have been separated. 

Sherlock looked at him for a moment, his periwinkle eyes inscrutable. And then he slid his legs down, shifted the short distance along the railing, and leaned forward until he was against John’s chest. John, surprised, nevertheless closed his arms around him instinctively. Sherlock settled, his head tucked under John’s chin, looking out over the ocean, and John set his chin on the top of Sherlock’s head and thought that he would never have anticipated how perfectly they fit together. 

“We don’t have to dream anymore, you and I,” said Sherlock, eventually. 

John thought that was easier said than done, but he appreciated the sentiment. He kissed the top of Sherlock’s head. 

“How did you get away?” he asked, softly. 

“I killed them,” answered Sherlock, flatly. “They were idiots, really. They were good at torture, that’s all. They were idiots about everything else. So I killed them and I escaped. I took the rest of my cigarettes, too. And their lighter.”

“Good,” said John, and pushed his hands into the curls on Sherlock’s neck. 

“I ruined your letter,” said Sherlock suddenly, and John was alarmed at how close to tears he sounded. Everything they were talking about and it was the _letter_ that had Sherlock close to tears? “It was in my pocket this morning, and it got wet, and it’s ruined.”

“All right,” said John, instinctively comforting. “I’ll write you another one.”

Sherlock sniffled. “I loved that letter.”

“Sherlock, I will write you a letter telling you why I love you every day for the rest of our lives if you want me to.”

“But they’ll never be that one. I’ve ruined everything.”

“Stop. You haven’t.”

“I have. I couldn’t get rid of them, John, every time I turned around there were more and more and more and I just wanted to go home. I just wanted to get back to you. It turns out I was terrible at being a spy, I was terrible at killing people; I hated it every single time, even when I was killing people who really deserved it. I didn’t know, when I left, I just wanted to keep you safe. And now you’re here with me and I still can’t keep you safe. I couldn’t even keep your _letter_ safe.”

“Shh,” said John, because he didn’t know what to say to any of that. 

“I woke up and you weren’t there, and I couldn’t even _think_. How would that have helped you? If something had really happened to you? If someone had taken you? We can’t go back to London. We’d be in danger almost immediately. But we’re still in danger now. Can we live the rest of our lives like this? And I was trying to be so careful with the letter; I wanted to keep it forever, so I wouldn’t let it out of my sight. I kept it in my pocket, and look at what happened because I did that. If I’d left it behind I’d still have it.”

“All right,” said John, firmly. “We are not letting the letter develop into some sort of metaphor. Or, if we are, it’s a metaphor for this.” John nudged Sherlock, forcing him to sit up, and he looked so devastated that John’s heart twisted in his chest. “You don’t need the letter to tell you that I love you. You have me for that. Just like I don’t need your letters to tell me about you anymore. Because I have you. Now. I want you to stop this. All of this. Stop _thinking_. This is where your panic attacks are coming from.” John cupped his hands around Sherlock’s head, his fingers splayed on the back of Sherlock’s skull, his thumbs caressing Sherlock’s cheeks. “You are not alone, and you don’t have to solve this alone. And you definitely don’t have to solve it today. Today we’re going to go snorkeling.”

Sherlock blinked. Clearly that was not the direction he had expected the conversation to take. “What?”

“Go and put on those hideous trunks I bought for you,” said John.

“ _Snorkeling_?” said Sherlock, incredulously. “Have you been listening to anything I’ve said to you?”

“I’ve been listening to every word. And unless I get you out of this villa you’re going to sit here _thinking_ about all of this and you’ll be hyperventilating by nightfall. So.” John gave Sherlock a gentle shove to give himself enough room to stand. “I’m getting you out of this villa. Snorkeling. Let’s go.”

“Do you even know how to snorkel?”

“You’re the cleverest human being on the planet, I’m sure you’ll figure it out and teach me,” replied John lightly as he headed into the villa. He paused in the doorway, looking back at Sherlock. “Oh, and for someone obsessed with the fact that I haven’t updated my blog, you haven’t even noticed: I _have_ updated it.”

Sherlock blinked after him, caught off-guard, and then scrambled off the railing and into the villa. John was in the bathroom, apparently getting ready for snorkeling. Sherlock could hear water running. He fumbled with turning on his laptop. He’d been ignoring his laptop because he didn’t want to be _aware_ of things for a little while, but now he was upset with himself for that. He went straight to John’s blog where there was indeed a new entry, titled _What Is There for Me to Say?_

The entry read, in its entirety: _Except what I should have said long ago. I love you. Pull off a miracle for me and come home._


	5. Chapter 5

Chapter Five

“Flippers,” said Sherlock. “You expect me to put on flippers?”

John, pulling his flippers on a bit less elegantly than he would have liked, said, “How else are you going to snorkel?”

“I was planning on snorkeling by not snorkeling and staying here and watching _you_ snorkel.”

“He’s not sold on the idea of snorkeling,” John told the nice hotel worker who was helping them get ready for it. Luckily the hotel offered snorkeling, and John had just had to drag Sherlock a short distance down the beach, Sherlock complaining about how hideous his trunks were the entire way. He had at least put them on, which John considered to be a huge victory, with a T-shirt that John expected Sherlock not to take off, which John was not going to mention as it made total sense. 

“Oh, it’s very safe,” the worker assured Sherlock. “And the fish are beautiful.”

“They’re _fish_ ,” said Sherlock. 

John took Sherlock’s hand, felt Sherlock turn to look at him in surprise. “I keep trying to tell him it’ll be romantic. We’re here on our honeymoon.”

“Aww,” said the hotel worker, beaming at them. “How lovely. Congratulations. And it is, very romantic. This young couple is on their honeymoon, too.” He gestured to a couple who had just straggled in from snorkeling, dripping wet.

The couple waved and said pleasant hellos, struggling out of their flippers. 

“How was the snorkeling?” asked John. 

“It was fantastic,” said the male half of the couple, enthusiastically. “Really, you’re going to love it. The fish come right up to you.”

“They’re _fish_ ,” said Sherlock again. 

“I had to be convinced, too,” the man went on, conspiratorially. “But she was right.”

“As usual,” laughed his new wife. 

“See, darling?” said John, and kissed Sherlock’s cheek before making his way out to the edge of the beach, having to be very careful not to trip over his own flippers. 

“You look ridiculous,” Sherlock called to him. 

“Not a very nice thing to say to your new husband,” John called back, adjusting the mask over his eyes and settling the snorkel in his mouth. Then he began splashing out into the ocean. It was really very tricky. The fins on his feet kept wanting to rise to the surface, and he had to fight to keep them down, and eventually he just collapsed into the water, shallow though it was, and paddled his way out to where it was a bit deeper. And then, getting his bearings, he turned back to the shore just in time to see Sherlock gracefully slide his way into the ocean, looking as if he snorkeled every day. John rolled his eyes as Sherlock paddled beautifully up to him, like a posh seal, and took his snorkel out of his mouth. “You’re an annoying bastard,” he told him. 

“ _I_ am?” replied Sherlock, sounding shocked. 

John tried to kiss him but his mask was not terribly conducive to the activity. 

“This is the stupidest idea you’ve ever had,” Sherlock sulked. “And you’ve had some terrible ideas.”

“Shut up, I think it’s romantic,” grinned John at him. 

“Yes, and what was that all about?”

“What?” asked John, innocently, replacing the snorkel in his mouth and disappearing under the water. It was actually pretty nice under there. Schools of little silver fish, and a few purple-and-yellow striped fish dotted through. John lifted his head out of the water. “It’s really quite pretty.”

“It’s _fish_ , John,” said Sherlock. 

John leaned over and ducked him under water. He came up flailing and sputtering for breath and immediately went for revenge, which John had been braced for and had attempted to flee, except that Sherlock grabbed at one of his flippers and pulled him back. John, off-balance without the use of one leg, sank under the water and struggled back upward, half-choking, and Sherlock pulled his mask off of him and said, “You are going to _drown_.”

“Only because you were holding onto my foot,” said John, and then Sherlock kissed him. 

John hadn’t been expecting that, and he made a sound of surprise as Sherlock’s hands settled on his head and his lips settled over John’s. And then Sherlock’s tongue slid its way into John’s willing mouth and John’s sound turned to approval and he struggled through the water for leverage, clinging to Sherlock, his arms around Sherlock’s neck and his hands in Sherlock’s hair. Sherlock tasted like the tea John had forced him to drink before leaving, and like the salt of the ocean around them, and like _Sherlock_ , and he kissed breathtakingly well. John was aware he was making tiny noises of desperate encouragement, trying to get closer and closer and closer. This was not like any of the small brushes of lips he’d exchanged with Sherlock so far. It was not even like the desperate kiss that morning. It was _a kiss_ , and when it ended, when John pulled his head back far enough to look down at Sherlock, to become aware that Sherlock had to be treading water ridiculously hard to be keeping them both afloat, what John also became aware of was that Sherlock, with one kiss, had basically turned him into a puddle of longing. But John had _wanted_ him for so long, it had been such a constant ache that John had almost stopped noticing it. 

They stared at each other for a long moment, panting for breath. 

Then John said, “You win. We’re done snorkeling.”

“Thank God,” said Sherlock. 

***

They had lost both of their masks, and the hotel worker was not happy about it. 

“Relax,” Sherlock told him. “We’re giving back our flippers, aren’t we?”

“I’m going to have to charge your room for the lost masks,” grumbled the worker. 

Sherlock shrugged and murmured to John, as they walked away, “Poor Mr. Kelly. His bill is going to be atrocious.”

John said nothing in reply. John walked swiftly with Sherlock back across the beach, his head a buzz of arousal, and he said, as soon as they walked into the villa, “Tell me that wasn’t just about avoiding snorkeling.”

“It wasn’t just about avoiding snorkeling,” Sherlock answered. 

“Good,” said John and fell on top of him, and for a little while everything was sheer and utter madness, a frenzy of hands and tongues and teeth as articles of clothing were flung every which way. Sherlock was clever and seemed determined to provoke a string of curses out of John, finding every spot on John’s body that John had never realized needed to be licked or bitten or sucked. “Bloody hell, you’re good at this,” John panted. 

“Am I?” Sherlock hummed pleasure into John’s skin, just below John’s navel, and John groaned and nearly sank to the floor and tugged hard on Sherlock’s hair. “Good. I want to be.” Sherlock’s mouth moved infinitesimally lower, and then he said, “Do you want this?”

The question—the _tone_ of it—penetrated John’s daze. This wasn’t some sort of flirtation Sherlock was asking. He was asking this seriously. “What?” gasped John.

Sherlock lifted his head, looking up at him, and John tried to reconcile the filthy sight of Sherlock on his knees in front of him with Sherlock asking, “Is this what you want? Or are you doing this because you think it’s what _I_ want?”

“Don’t you want it?” asked John, his lungs suddenly squeezing with panic. It was fine, he told himself, he could live the rest of his life without sex, that would be totally fine, it would be _fine_. 

“I asked first,” said Sherlock, calmly, his breath so low on John’s abdomen that John had to squeeze his eyes shut. 

“Okay,” said John, tightly. “If you want to have a serious conversation about this, you can’t stay where you are.”

“You’re heterosexual,” said Sherlock. 

“Yeah, I’ve been having doubts about the truth of that for a while now, and I think you’ve just pretty much sealed the verdict on that.”

“And that means…?”

“It means yes, I want this. Yes, I want _you_.”

“Good,” said Sherlock, and took John’s trunks off, and then Sherlock stopped talking because his mouth was occupied with other things, which was good because John lost entirely all ability to have a coherent conversation and mostly concentrated on being gentlemanly enough not to thrust into Sherlock’s mouth and not to tear pieces of his hair out, but Sherlock felt _so good_ and was _so clever_ and _Jesus Christ he was going to love him until the end of time_. 

John, gasping for breath, realized he’d sunk entirely to the floor and that Sherlock was kneeling next to him, looking smug. 

“That was good,” Sherlock announced. 

“Shut _up_ ,” said John, and pulled him in for a messy kiss. When it was over, Sherlock rested his forehead against John’s. John panted for breath and said, “You are bloody _fantastic. Christ_.”

Sherlock kissed him again, a brief brush of lips over his, curved into a smile. 

“Okay,” said John, beginning to catch his breath. “Here’s the thing. I can give that a try—I _want_ to—but I’ve never done that before, so…”

“Well, I’ve never done it before, either. We’re the blind leading the blind. Or the blind leading the visually impaired. Wait, which one of us is doing the leading?”

“That was your first time,” said John. 

“Yes. Wait until I really get the hang of it.”

“I don’t know whether to be terrified or thrilled over that,” remarked John. 

Sherlock moved back a bit and gave him the world’s most beaming smile. John thought he had never seen him look so happy, his eyes so brightly blue. 

“Come on,” said Sherlock. “Can you walk yet? I want to give the receiving end a try, but you’ll prefer a bed, this floor is murder on your knees.”

“Sherlock,” said John, catching his hand and holding him in place, and Sherlock looked at him expectantly. “I love you,” he said. 

Sherlock kept smiling at him, and John thought he was going to say _I love you, too_. But what he said instead, stopping John’s still stuttering heart in his chest, was “I know.”

***

John had thought that the whole thing would be awkward and uncomfortable. It had been so long since he had felt out of his element in bed that he thought surely he would misstep. Sherlock was being so calmly matter-of-fact, stripping out of the rest of his clothing and still going on about his blind-leading-the-blind analogy (“Maybe we’re _both_ just visually impaired instead of entirely blind.”) and John was trying desperately to mentally catalogue all of the things that _he_ liked in the hope that he would be able to reverse his role in them and that Sherlock would like the same things. 

And it turned out that, actually, after a moment of gulping panic when Sherlock was laid out before him like a veritable feast, John realized there was probably almost nothing he could have done incorrectly. Sherlock melted with a single touch, closing his eyes and shuddering, and it occurred to John that Sherlock had not only never let anyone do this to him before, he’d never _wanted_ to let anyone do this to him before. For Sherlock, there was John and only John. John was, somehow, to Sherlock, the pinnacle of everything that could ever be. John, dizzy with the thought of it, kissed him with every emotion he hadn’t yet found a word for and tasted the return of those emotions on Sherlock’s lips. 

John was pleased that he’d already had his orgasm because it meant that he relished taking his time. He wanted to take Sherlock completely to pieces before putting him back together again, because now he _could_. So he kissed and nuzzled and Sherlock arched to meet him, wherever he was, and gasped his name in astonishment, like he was some amazing discovery Sherlock had made. John could barely comprehend the depths of adoration in the way Sherlock reacted to him, his head was swimming with it. 

From John’s vantage point, he thought he had some room for improvement. For one thing, he could have been prepared for the bucking of Sherlock’s hips. For another, he could have been a little better about not having a choking fit at the end. But Sherlock seemed to mind these things not at all. Sherlock sprawled bonelessly on the bed while John went in search of a flannel to clean up the mess he’d made and then crawled onto the bed next to Sherlock.

The sun was setting, the light in the room was red, and the ocean crashed beyond their window. Sherlock _beamed_ at him like he was the most brilliant human being Sherlock had ever met. 

“Not blind _or_ visually impaired,” said Sherlock. 

“High praise,” said John, wryly. “I’ll get better at that.”

“But you’re perfect,” said Sherlock. 

The conviction in Sherlock’s voice was a little terrifying. John could handle being loved—he _wanted_ to be loved—but he worried about being idolized. “I’m really not.”

“Well, of course,” said Sherlock, dismissively. “If you’re measuring objectively, of course you’re not perfect. Your temper is a little shorter than it could be, and you’re a terrible typist, and you are incapable of managing money properly, and you have appalling fashion sense—”

“Okay,” said John, good-naturedly. “The rest can wait.”

“What I _meant_ , of course, when I said you were perfect is that you are perfect _for me_.” Sherlock reached out and brushed John’s fringe off his forehead and smiled at John with every constellation in the sky in his eyes. John was absolutely positive no women he’d ever taken to bed had ever looked at him like that, just as he was absolutely positive that none of them had ever told him he was perfect. 

“You’re amazing,” said John. 

Sherlock’s smile widened into a grin. “Do you know that you say that out loud?”

John chuckled. “Sorry. I’ll stop.”

“Don’t ever stop,” said Sherlock, leaning forward and kissing him. 

John let himself fall into the kiss, into this world that was only _Sherlock_ , nothing more, nothing less, Sherlock who he was perfect for, who was perfect for him. “I’ll never stop,” he promised, around the kiss. “I haven’t so far, have I?”

“No. You’re very dependable. I’ve quite got used to it.” 

“You’re very spoilt,” said John. 

“Quite. You spoil me.”

“Terribly. It’s horrible.”

“It isn’t. I approve of it a great deal.” The kiss had grown lazy and absent, a brush of lips in between phrases. 

“Of course you do,” remarked John. 

Sherlock broke off the kissing entirely, rubbed his nose against John’s instead. “How long until you’re up for another round? Given your age and everything.” Sherlock asked the question with a solemnity that anyone but John would have found completely straight-faced. 

“Prat,” said John, and playfully whacked him with his pillow. 

***

_A kiss for every constellation_ , Sherlock had said, and John was trying very hard to find any past Orion’s belt, which Sherlock said didn’t count because John didn’t know where the whole constellation was, just the belt part. 

Not that John was overly concerned that Sherlock was going to be difficult to persuade to break the kissing rule, because Sherlock had been the one who had refused to get out of bed the entirety of the day. Sherlock, it turned out, really liked sex. John was not complaining. They had spent the entire day alternating between naps and sex. Well, John had napped. He had usually woken to Sherlock sitting up in the bed next to him, reading. John either hated Sherlock’s energy or adored it, depending on what Sherlock was doing with the energy. All in all, John did not think he’d ever had such a perfect lazy day. 

But he had also wanted a change of sheets and had called the maid in and had convinced Sherlock that instead of just moving to the bed in the other room, they should get some semblance of dressed and go down to the beach and look at the stars. It had been Sherlock’s idea that they turn it into a game. And John had gone along with it because he was really relieved at how casually Sherlock was taking the intrusion of the maid in the room, instead of tensing up with suspicion. 

“The Big Dipper,” said John, pointing at some random assortment of stars. “And the Little Dipper.” John had no idea where either constellation was, but what the hell, he figured he’d bluff it. 

“Wrong and wrong,” said Sherlock, next to him. 

“What?” exclaimed John, trying to sound offended. “How dare you doubt me?”

“That’s the Big Dipper over there,” said Sherlock, pointing to an entirely different area of the sky. “See those four stars? They compose the cup part of the ‘dipper.’”

“Oh my God,” John realized, and sat up so he could properly glare down at Sherlock. “You read my astronomy books! While I was sleeping today!”

Sherlock looked smug. “Is it my fault you do so much sleeping?”

“Yes, actually, today’s sleeping _was_ pretty much your fault, but that’s beside the point. _I_ was supposed to be teaching _you_ the constellations!” 

“You were doing a bloody awful job of it, John,” replied Sherlock. 

“I hadn’t, you know, started in earnest yet. I was busy doing other things. You are such a _cheater_.”

“How was I cheating? At what?”

“At this game! You knew I had no idea what any of the constellations were!”

Sherlock reached up, pulled John on top of him, and kissed him thoroughly. “There,” he said. “Are you happy now? A kiss for each constellation you could at least name, even if you have no idea where it is in the sky.”

“Well,” said John, appeased, settling casually over Sherlock and reaching out to sift sand through his hands, “I suppose that’s acceptable.”

Sherlock nibbled distractingly behind John’s ear, John tipping his head to make sure Sherlock could get proper access to that perfect spot just _there_. “I am going to learn every single star in the sky,” Sherlock mumbled. “And then I’m going to kiss you once for each one of them.”

“We’re never going to get out of bed, are we?” remarked John. 

“Problem?”

“How will we make money to feed ourselves?”

“Dull,” replied Sherlock, and stopped nibbling, putting his head back on the sand and stretching a bit. 

John looked at Sherlock as he looked up at the sky. He looked content, which made John content. He put his head down on Sherlock’s chest and thought how, only a few months earlier, if anyone had tried to tell him he’d be sprawled on a bloke’s chest on a beach star-gazing during a romantic holiday, he’d have laughed. Unless they’d said the bloke was Sherlock, and then maybe he might have choked and gone into rapid denial and tried not to think too hard about how much he maybe wanted that. 

“You went back to the clinic, didn’t you?” 

John had been a million miles away. It took him a second to translate Sherlock’s question. “Yes. I had to. I needed money.”

“The flat was paid for.”

“I couldn’t stay in 221B, Sherlock.”

“Oh.” Sherlock’s voice was the soft one he used when reaching sudden conclusions he hadn’t seen before. “Of course. You moved out.”

“I had to. It was torture in that flat without you. I saw you everywhere I went. I _heard_ you. Every time I managed to fall asleep, I’d wake up a few minutes later convinced that I heard the violin downstairs. It was awful. I was going mad.”

Sherlock’s hand settled on John’s back, stroked. An apology, John knew. “And yet you still received the letters?”

“Mrs. Hudson rang me to tell me I had misdirected mail.”

“Ah,” said Sherlock. 

There was a moment of silence. 

“I recognized your handwriting, you know,” John said. “I almost fell off the front step.”

“Were you angry then?”

“No. Not yet. I didn’t know what to think. At first I thought maybe you’d sent them before you jumped, and they’d got delayed. It wasn’t until I started reading that I realized you must still be alive. And _then_ I was angry. I almost stopped reading them.”

“Right.Of course. I thought that you might. And then you started again. Obviously. And you realized I was still alive.”

“I realized that you’d faked the entire suicide thing, yes. Although I didn’t know _why_.”

“There were assassins,” said Sherlock, and John was surprised because he hadn’t quite expected Sherlock to get into it. “One for you, one for Lestrade, one for Mrs. Hudson. And the assassins had orders: If they didn’t see me jump off that building, then you were all to die. And I couldn’t let that happen.”

John processed this. “You could have come back immediately.”

“And flaunt that it had all been a hoax? Do you really think they wouldn’t have killed you anyway? Do you really think they would have laughed and said, ‘Oh, good one, Sherlock, you really tricked us’? No, I had to get rid of every last fleck of Moriarty left in the world. I had to make all of you _safe_.”

“You could have told me,” John suggested, because it had been nagging at him. 

“And take the risk of you being of value to them? Of you having a secret they might want? Of you not being quite convincing enough in your grief? Do you understand that the entire point was to take all risk to you out of it?”

“I could have come on the run with you. Like now. Like this. I could have helped you.”

Sherlock replied after a moment, softly, “Yes. You could have. I wanted so much to keep you safe. Physically safe. It didn’t occur to me, the _emotional_ damage… And it didn’t occur to me how incapable I would be at letting you go, even for your own good.”

“I thought you were dead, you know,” said John, shifting so he could press his nose into Sherlock’s chest, breathe in the reassuring aliveness of him. “That last letter you sent me…I was convinced that you would only have written that, only have sent me all of them, if you thought you were going to die. And if _you_ thought it, well, how frequently are you wrong? I was terrified. I was so terrified of losing you all over again. I promised myself if I found you still alive by some miracle…”

“What did you promise yourself?” prompted Sherlock. 

John lifted his head to look down at him. “That I would never let you separate us again. That I would never again believe that you had left me. I couldn’t believe how I’d fallen for it the first time.”

“You were supposed to fall for it. That was the point.”

“I should have _known_ , Sherlock. I’m sure now, if I went back and looked, I would see a million different signs, a million different clues.”

“You weren’t supposed to look, John. I did it the way I did it so you _wouldn’t look_ , do you see?”

“I do see. But that doesn’t mean that I’m ever going to be completely okay with it. I love you. And I will love you, utterly and completely, with every breath I have in my body. I need you to know that. And I need you to know that there will always be a part of me that you killed that day, a part of me that might never fully forgive it. But it doesn’t really matter. Because I do love you, I love you with every fiber of my being. Can you understand that? Do you believe me?”

Sherlock smiled at him but it was sad and haunted. “Oh, yes. I understand that. There’s a part of me that will never forgive _myself_ for it.”

John put his head down against Sherlock. Sherlock’s heart beat comfortingly underneath him, and John matched his breathing to the rhythm of the waves.


	6. Chapter 6

Chapter Six

“When did you know?” asked John. They were sitting on the veranda, on either side of a lunch of sandwiches that both of them were tearing into enthusiastically. Sherlock had been eating better lately. John had been thinking that he wished he’d known that days of constant sex were all Sherlock needed. And then he had realized that he would never have indulged in days of constant sex with Sherlock before losing him, because John hadn’t known that he’d wanted him that way until he’d lost him. John hadn’t _let_ himself know that he’d wanted him that way. 

“When did I know what?” asked Sherlock, licking salt from the chips off his fingers absently. 

“When did you know that we would be like this together?”

Sherlock glanced at him, surprised. He was dressed, but barely, his shirt uncuffed and unbuttoned, and his hair was an absolute disaster, and John thought he had never looked more devastatingly attractive. “I knew the moment I saw you. Didn’t I mention it in the letters?”

It was John’s turn to be surprised. “Yes, but I thought you were…I thought you were exaggerating. I thought you were, you know, using a figure of speech.”

“No.” Sherlock went back to his sandwich as if this were a casual thing to assert. “I knew as soon as you walked into the laboratory. With that ridiculous fake limp.”

“It wasn’t ‘fake,’” corrected John, “it was psychosomatic. There is a difference.”

Sherlock shrugged and bit into a pickle. 

“So I walked into St. Bart’s, and you glanced my way…” prompted John, fascinated now. 

“And I thought, ‘Excellent. Mike has brought me my very own army man.’”

“Stop it,” John laughed and threw a chip at Sherlock. 

Sherlock smiled and took a bite of his sandwich, and John let him because it was clear Sherlock didn’t really want to seriously discuss this. 

But Sherlock, after swallowing, kept talking, “What I thought, in that first glance I sent you, was that you were former military, recently wounded. That you were out-of-sorts and a bit uncertain. That you looked as mild-mannered as a librarian but there was steel in that spine that would take any idiot who tried to cross you by unpleasant—deadly, it turned out—surprise. That you looked older than you were because you _felt_ older than you were. That you didn’t smile enough, although you used to be quite prone to it, so you needed someone to make you smile more. That I’d prefer your hair once it grew out a bit. That you were bored with the drudgery of the everyday life. That I understand that boredom. That, if I let you into my flat, if I let you into my life, I’d never want you to leave. That’s what I thought.”

John was silent for a moment, feeling a bit dazed. “You thought all that. In that first glance.”

“Yes. And I’d made up my mind to have you as soon as you offered me your mobile. ‘Mike doesn’t have his mobile,’ I thought. ‘I’ll ask to use it, and Mike will refuse, and if this new army doctor fellow offers to let a perfect stranger use his mobile rather than forcing me to take the obvious expedient of using the landline or going somewhere where I’d get better service then I’ll tell him about the flat.’ And you offered.”

“That was all a _setup_?”

“Of course it was. You know me. Do I ever do anything without some sort of _reason_? Have I ever demanded to use another person’s mobile?”

“Yes. You demand to use my mobile all the time.”

“I demand to use _your_ mobile. You’re so silly. You kept thinking that things I did with you were to be put in a category of Things Sherlock Does With People. Whereas they were only ever, for me, things I did with _you_. My God, you’re so maddeningly thick sometimes.” Sherlock said it fondly, as if he thought even that was adorable about John. 

“So I offered to let you use my mobile, and you said, ‘Thanks’ and came over to take it, and you didn’t say a word about the flat. Not then.”

Sherlock’s lips twitched. “No. I showed off. I had to. I couldn’t resist it. Do you know what you would have done, had I just said to you, ‘Oh, I’ve got a flat in central London, good location, we ought to share it’?”

“I would’ve gone to look at the flat with you. I was looking for a flat, Sherlock.”

“No, you weren’t. You were depressed, John. You were looking for a _friend_. I say to you, ‘Come see my flat, we can be flatmates, it would be so practical, make so much sense.’ You’re polite, you would have said, ‘Yes, that sounds like it could work, why don’t you put your number in my mobile, I’ll ring you later.’ And then you would have texted me later and bowed out, because the idea of it would have made you panic, the _dullness_ of it, this man you met in a lab at St. Bart’s, doing science experiments, God, how boring. The idea of taking so practical a step as to just get a flatmate, a practical flatmate, you would never have been able to do it. You couldn’t take a step that would have cemented the tediousness of your life. I had to impress you. I had to be stunning. I had to catch your interest the way nothing had since you’d been back. I had to be the maddest idea you’d ever had. So I was.”

John stared across at him, saying all of this so simply, and to John it had always been almost like fate. He had met Sherlock that day, and his life had been a whirlwind since. He had never really thought that it had been that way because Sherlock had _wanted_ it that way. Sherlock had made up his mind to have him the instant he had seen him, and Sherlock had made sure that it would happen. What if he _hadn’t_?

“Oh my God,” said John. 

Sherlock glanced across at him. “You’re not going to be upset about this, are you? I didn’t manipulate you _exactly_ —”

“No. No, I’m not upset. I’m… What if you hadn’t done all that? What if you hadn’t made up your mind to catch my interest? What if you hadn’t asked to use Mike’s mobile; what if I hadn’t offered; what if you hadn’t impressed me? What if you hadn’t looked at me and known right away that you wanted me?”

Sherlock sat back in his seat and looked at him calmly. “John. For all those things to not have happened, you would have had to not have been you, and I would have had to not have been me. And then it wouldn’t have mattered because it wouldn’t have been me meeting you. It _was_ me meeting you. It was inevitable. Had you walked into a lab at St. Bart’s, or Speedy’s Café, or had I run across you in a park or on the Tube, I would have recognized you immediately. I would have had the same first-instant of looking at you. Having met you, there was no way I wouldn’t have found a way to catch you.”

John swallowed thickly, past a sudden lump in his throat, watching Sherlock reach for one of the chocolate mints that had come with the room service. “As long as we met, you would have done that. What if we’d never met?”

“Well, now you’re just being philosophical,” accused Sherlock, unwrapping the mint. 

“Still. I feel like we should send Mike a bouquet.”

“I already sent him a bouquet,” said Sherlock, and popped the mint in his mouth. 

“ _What_?”

“I sent him a bouquet. After you moved in and killed a man for me I decided it really was true love. So I sent Mike a bouquet.”

“From the both of us?” This seemed not unlike something Sherlock would do. 

“Of course not from you. You were still in denial, remember?” Sherlock gave him a sour look. 

“What did you even _say_ in the card you sent with the bouquet?” John was trying to imagine this. He was trying to recall if Mike had ever behaved like he knew Sherlock was in love with John. 

“I said, ‘Thank you for saving our lives.’”

“I thought you said you didn’t send it from both of us.”

“Well, then after that I signed it ‘Sherlock.’”

“But you used the plural possessive.”

“Because he did save _both_ of our lives, John. As you confirmed in the cabin in Siberia, remember? I just didn’t know how literal I was being. I thought it was a funny little card, honestly, since you _had_ just saved my life, and I thought your life was just being wasted the way you were living it before you met me.”

“I can’t believe you never told me this.”

“What was I going to tell you? ‘Oh, John, by the way, I sent Mike some flowers to thank him for the tremendous favor he did us in introducing the two of us.’”

“Well, yes, you could have said that.”

Sherlock made a face. “Do you know what you would have said to me? ‘I’m not _gay_ , Sherlock,’ you would have said to me. ‘We are not a _couple_.’”

There was a moment of silence. Sherlock crumpled and uncrumpled the wrapper of the mint. 

John said, “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I really am. We should have done this _so_ much sooner.”

Sherlock concentrated on the wrapper. “Yes. We should have,” he agreed, shortly. 

“Why didn’t you tell me? I wish you would have told me.”

Sherlock looked up, his opal eyes picking up the colors of the sea and sky, piercing and accusatory. “Do you really think if I’d told you that I was unbelievably in love with you that you would have come to the sudden realization that you felt the same about me? Because you wouldn’t have. Maybe, eventually, but your instinct would have been to let me down easy, and then put some distance between us, and I couldn’t bear the thought of that.”

John acknowledged that Sherlock was probably right. And he said, “I knew the instant you said good-bye.”

“What?” said Sherlock.

“When you phoned me that day. At the end of the call. The last thing you said to me. It was _Good-bye, John_. And you said ‘good-bye’ and suddenly I knew that I was in love with you, that I’d _been_ in love with you, and I wanted to tell you, but it was over, you jumped off a building. But I knew then, in that instant, when you said ‘good-bye’ and I realized what you meant by that. Or what I thought you meant by that. And I knew.”

There was a moment of silence. “I knew by the end of the first cab ride, on the way to the pink lady crime scene.”

“I thought you said you knew in the first instant you looked at me.”

“No, no, I knew you were trouble for me. I knew that if I let you in I’d never be able to live without you. I knew we’d fit each other nicely, be perfect for each other. I didn’t put the word _love_ to it until the first cab ride. I just thought, I don’t know, fascination. Even addiction, maybe, because certainly that was what the rush was like when I saw you again outside of 221B and you called me ‘Mr. Holmes’ like the most adorable idiot I’d ever met. A challenge, I thought. Maybe I liked you because you were a challenge. I wanted so badly to impress you, and I kept misstepping: You thought the flat was too messy and crowded, you didn’t like my website. Intellectual curiosity, I thought. And then we were in the cab, and I explained my deduction to you, and you praised it, you said it was extraordinary, and I looked at you and…my heart fell. Which makes no sense. But I felt it. It fell directly at your feet. I had the clear thought that that was what had happened. I said to myself, ‘Oh my God, I think you’re actually _in love_ with this man.’ And I was.”

John smiled at him. “Funny,” he said. 

“Is it?” Sherlock looked uncertain, like he didn’t know what was funny about it. 

“Because when I thought about it afterward, after everything had happened and I realized that I’d been in love with you the whole time, I tried to think when it had happened, when I had fallen for you, how long I had been clueless about it. And I decided it was that first cab ride.”

Sherlock looked pleased. “The deduction?”

“No. The fact that you made that little joke afterward, about people normally saying ‘piss off.’ Not only were you extraordinary, but you were funny to boot. How did my heart ever stand a chance when faced with Sherlock Holmes?”

The corners of Sherlock’s lips turned upward. “That’s not what people normally say,” he said. 

“Thank God people are such enormous idiots,” replied John. 

***

John was watching television when Sherlock got out of the shower. Some terrible game show he’d found. He wasn’t invested in it; it had just been something to do while waiting for Sherlock so that they could discuss dinner. 

Sherlock sat on the sofa next to him, close but not touching, careful. So careful that John looked at him. He was looking fixedly at the television. 

“All right?” John asked curiously. 

Sherlock nodded, his chin moving in a jerky way. 

He definitely wasn’t all right, but it didn’t seem like the sort of _not-all-right_ that needed a bunch of pressing on John’s part. It wasn’t a near-nervous-breakdown, it was just Sherlock working through something, processing. 

For that reason, John didn’t mention dinner. He bit his tongue and thought he could wait until this round of the game show was over, just to see if Sherlock was going to say anything further. 

Out of the corner of his eye he saw Sherlock shift toward him, then away, then toward him again. John was about to tell him to just spit it out when Sherlock tentatively lifted his hand and set his fingers against the top of John’s hand where it was resting on the sofa. 

John turned his head, inquisitive. 

Sherlock looked uncertain, wary, like John was about to snap at him. “Is this okay?”

John glanced down at where Sherlock’s fingers lay gently against his hand. “Of course it’s okay,” he said, not really seeing what the big deal was. All the things he and Sherlock had done over the past few days and it was a bit of hand-holding on the sofa that was making Sherlock awkward? John turned his hand over to thread their fingers together, just to punctuate the point, and looked back to the game show. 

“I don’t really want a shag,” Sherlock blurted out suddenly, and John looked at him in surprise. “I mean, not right now. Not to say that—I don’t mean that—it was just that—”

“Sherlock,” John interrupted, patiently. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, but I’m not going to be offended if we don’t shag every minute of every day. It actually would be a physical impossibility, you know.”

“Right. But,” said Sherlock, and then stopped talking and looked at their joined hands. 

“Oh, you daft git,” John realized, and used his hand to tug Sherlock over and against him. Confirming his suspicions, Sherlock settled immediately, snuggling in firmly with a contented little sigh that John wasn’t even sure he was aware he’d made. John brushed a kiss over the head that was now tucked close up against his shoulder. “If you wanted a cuddle, you just had to ask.”

Sherlock turned his head, his nose pressing against John’s neck, still warm from the shower. “I didn’t want to bother you,” Sherlock mumbled against his skin. 

“You’re not bothering me.” John smoothed his hand over Sherlock’s hair, because he found that whenever his hands were within touching distance of Sherlock’s hair, they tended to be _in_ Sherlock’s hair. 

Sherlock breathed, deep and slow, and then said, “This was actually what I wanted most. I’ve never been inclined to spend much time thinking about sex, but I would watch you watching television and I would want so much to do just _this_. Just curl up next to you and have you want me there. There were some nights when my brain would not be quiet and I thought that if only I could settle right here, I could let you breathe me into quiet, into sleep.”

John paused, thinking. “But…you don’t cuddle. At all. You almost never touch me unless we’re shagging or getting there quickly.”

Sherlock didn’t reply.

“Sherlock.” John jostled him off his shoulder, and Sherlock sat up reluctantly, looking like he was dreading the conversation. “You really like cuddling, don’t you?”

Sherlock lifted one shoulder in a shrug, trying to look indifferent. 

“Or,” continued John, slowly, “you would, if you did it at all. You’d really _like_ to cuddle, but for some reason you think I won’t like it?”

“I don’t want to bother you,” said Sherlock. “It’s not important.”

“Of course it’s important. The sex is easy, you can tell if I like the sex, but you can’t tell if I like the cuddling, so you’ve been resisting introducing it.”

“Well, you didn’t seem inclined to do it,” Sherlock pointed out, petulantly. 

“I thought _you_ didn’t want to do it. Sherlock, I didn’t want to push you past anything you weren’t comfortable with. I’ve been trying to let you go slowly. But I actually like a good snuggle on the sofa. And I wouldn’t object if you didn’t sleep as if we have the Great Wall of China down the middle of the bed.”

“It really doesn’t matter to me if it’s not something you want,” said Sherlock, staunchly. 

John tipped his head in confusion. “I just told you it was fine with me.”

“But I don’t want you to say that it’s fine because I pushed the issue and then you develop a slow, seething resentment because you actually really don’t like it and then—”

“And then I leave,” John concluded. 

“Well.” Sherlock considered, and then seemed to decide to go all in, setting his chin. “Yes. Then you leave.”

“I’m not leaving,” said John, steadily. “And I’m definitely not going to leave because of _this_. Seriously, all the mad things I’m willing to put up with because of how in love with you I am, and you’re worried I’m going to get miffed because you want to put your head on my shoulder while we watch telly?”

“What else do you put up with?” Sherlock seemed mystified by the very idea that John put up with things where Sherlock was concerned. 

“You have the strangest understanding of what about you is difficult to live with. Like when we first met and you warned me about the violin and your tendency not to talk much sometimes. No mention of, you know, the severed heads that would be in the fridge.”

“But the severed head was an experiment,” Sherlock reminded him, sounding genuinely confused, as if that simple fact meant that no logical person could therefore consider the severed head to be objectionable. 

John suddenly caught Sherlock’s face in his hands, and it startled Sherlock, he could tell from the expression in those blue-gray eyes. “I love you,” John said, fiercely, his voice shaking with it, “ _so bloody much_.” John kissed him hard before pulling back and saying, “You utter _lunatic_.”

“Are you watching this game show?” Sherlock asked, a little breathlessly. “Because I’ve changed my mind about the sex.”

***

Sherlock was sweaty and gross, but John refused to think about that. He stubbornly draped himself half over him, and Sherlock huffed and squirmed and said, “You’re being ridiculous.”

John made a noncommittal noise. 

Sherlock huffed again, shifted again, and then settled, relaxing more than John had yet felt him do post-shag. His hand came up, hesitantly, to press John to him, half caress, half proclamation. John smiled into the skin of Sherlock’s shoulder and let the silence draw out a bit. The ocean crashed in the distance. 

Eventually, John recalled his abandoned thought about dinner. 

“We should go into town tomorrow,” John suggested.

“Leave the villa?” Sherlock’s voice was laced with amusement. “What a novel idea.”

John was relieved that Sherlock seemed amused. Sherlock’s edginess around others was not the reason they hadn’t left the villa lately, but John had been concerned that perhaps Sherlock would feel uncertain about the prospect of leaving the safe bubble they were in. John was pleased that Sherlock didn’t sound that way. “If we got food, I could cook something for you. I know how you’ve missed my cooking.”

“If we got food, I could cook something for _you_ ,” Sherlock countered. 

John lifted his head up to stare down at Sherlock, whose eyes were closed, his features relaxed. “Do you cook?” John asked, in disbelief. 

“How many times must I tell you, John? Cooking is science.”

“So you cook then.”

“I _could_ cook. I choose not to.”

“Have you ever cooked anything before?”

“What do you think I did before I met you?”

“I think you just didn’t eat.”

Sherlock chuckled. “You’re so vain.”

“ _I’m_ so vain?”

“You think before I met you that I was flailing about with no idea how to take care of myself.”

“Not true.”

Sherlock opened his eyes to give him a dubious look. “No?”

“I _know_ that’s what you were doing before you met me.”

“I can cook,” said Sherlock. 

“Beans on toast?”

“You have such pedestrian tastes.”

“No, no, if you’re going to cook for me, I want something fancy. Something French.”

“You don’t even care for French food.”

“How do you know?”

“Because I know everything.”

“You’re insufferable,” said John, and thought of Sherlock’s letters, Sherlock tired of speaking French, Sherlock longing for home. 

The thought must have shown on his face, because Sherlock said, “It wasn’t Paris.”

“What wasn’t?” John asked. 

“When I wrote that letter, I wasn’t in Paris. I was in a little town in Provence. It was deadly dull. Except for the fact that there was a world-class assassin renting a little chateau near there.”

Sherlock was speaking with his eyes on the ceiling. He had gone tense underneath John, and John wanted to change the subject, wanted Sherlock not to associate cuddling with this. He put his head back down and said, “We don’t need to talk about this.”

“We could go to Paris,” Sherlock continued. “I like Paris. I speak fluent French.”

“Of course you do,” said John. “We can go to Paris. Or not. It doesn’t matter to me.” John paused. “I _am_ going to insist on a French dinner tomorrow night though.”

“Not a problem,” replied Sherlock, breezily. 

John grinned and brushed a kiss over Sherlock’s shoulder. 

Sherlock said, “Is it strange for you?”

“What?” asked John, lazily, settling back onto Sherlock’s chest. 

“That I’m not a woman.”

“Sherlock, in all honesty, toward the end there it was strange when the women I was dating weren’t _you_. Maybe this should be the strangest thing I’ve ever done in my life. Maybe it _is_. But it’s the first thing in my life that I’ve got right in a long time. Certainly in the last six months.”

A shudder went through Sherlock, causing John to prop himself up to see him. “What?” he asked. 

Sherlock, eyes wide and ice blue, shook his head. “Nothing.”

“Not nothing.” John shifted to pull himself more firmly onto Sherlock, so that he could look down at him more squarely. “You believe me about that, right? You’re not worrying about that, are you?”

“No,” said Sherlock, hoarsely. “I’m not worrying about that. I believe you.” Sherlock shifted, nudging at John, rolling until he was sprawled on top of John, looking down at John, and John looked back up at him curiously. “You were the only thing I ever got right in my _life_.”

John took a second, looking up into the unusual eyes, open and vulnerable in ways they so seldom were, and _never_ were with people who weren’t John. He swallowed past the tightness in his chest and said, “Not past tense, Sherlock. I’m not past tense. I’m present. I’m _here_.” And he pulled Sherlock down for a kiss.


	7. Chapter 7

Chapter Seven

Sherlock was out of bed when John woke up. He’d called for room service and was sitting on the veranda with the tray and the laptop on his lap. John snagged a croissant, yawned a good morning, and stumbled into the shower. 

When he got out of the shower, Sherlock said, “Let’s go into town.”

“Can I have a cup of coffee first?” John asked, pouring himself one. 

Sherlock sighed heavily as if John were the most troublesome human being on the planet and commenced to drumming his fingers on the counter. Repeatedly. Not stopping. 

John took a few sips of his coffee before deciding that he’d rather just go to town. “Never mind,” he said, putting his mug down. “You can buy me some coffee when we get to town.”

“I will do nothing of the sort,” sniffed Sherlock. “I am _shopping_ when we get to town.”

“Yes. Shopping for coffee for me,” replied John. “Let’s go.”

Sherlock seemed distracted as he drove. He cursed the other drivers the way he usually did, but it was more force of habit than true irritation. 

“What are you shopping for anyways?” John asked. 

Sherlock gave him a brief, withering look. “Your French dinner, of course.”

“Oh,” John realized. “You don’t really have to cook me a French dinner. I was only joking about that last night.”

Sherlock frowned. “Do you think I can’t cook a French dinner?”

“Sherlock, I think you can do anything you put your mind to. You just don’t need to—”

“Well, now you’re just being patronizing,” said Sherlock. “Do you like red snapper?”

“I suppose. I generally like seafood.”

“Excellent. Then red snapper meuniere. That’s what we’re having for dinner.”

John cocked his head and thought of the laptop on Sherlock’s lap that morning. “Did you look that up on the Internet this morning?”

Sherlock didn’t answer, which was a dead giveaway. 

John wanted to reiterate that Sherlock really didn’t need to cook him dinner, but Sherlock was never swayed from an idea once he’d decided upon it, so John decided to pick his battles. He left Sherlock haggling with the seafood shack and went to buy coffee from the nearby stand. He turned around with his freshly procured coffee and nearly spilled it all by walking directly into Sherlock. 

“Jesus,” he said. “You are determined that I not have coffee this morning, aren’t you?” He sipped it and looked at the paper package Sherlock was holding. “Get the fish?” When Sherlock didn’t answer, he looked up at him. “What?” 

Sherlock had a strange look on his face, stiff and stricken, and, to John’s surprise, he reached out and pulled John roughly against him, leaning down to press his head into the curve of John’s neck. John, his coffee squashed uncomfortably between them, lifted the one free hand he had and patted Sherlock’s back. “Okay?” he asked, uncertainly.

“I turned around and you weren’t there.”

“I went to get coffee,” said John. “I told you.”

“I know. I know you did. You weren’t there, and I thought, he went to get coffee, he told you he was getting coffee. But I still couldn’t—couldn’t—”

“Deep breath, Sherlock,” John interrupted him. “Remember? Like I taught you. Nice deep breath, hold it, let it out slowly. There you go. Just like that.”

After a moment, Sherlock released him and stepped back, displeasure evident on his face. “I _hate_ this,” he spat out. 

“I know,” said John, because he did. He hesitated, unsure whether to suggest they go back to the villa. He finally settled on inquiring, neutrally, “Are we all set here?” There was no way they were—Sherlock had done nothing but buy some fish—but he thought it sounded better than _Let’s go home so you don’t have a panic attack on the pavement_. 

“No,” said Sherlock, staunchly. “We are going _shopping_.” And then he marched toward the supermarket. 

John followed in his wake, pushing the trolley and paying very little attention to what Sherlock was throwing into it. He was busy thinking about the fact that Sherlock still couldn’t seem to let him out of his sight without it provoking severe anxiety, and about what John could do to make Sherlock feel _safe_. John thought there was probably nothing he could do, which was the worst part. It would just take time. And all of Moriarty’s men dropping dead. Maybe Mycroft was taking care of that for them. 

John blinked, suddenly becoming aware that Sherlock had just thrown lube in with the flour and the butter and the tarragon. 

“Um,” said John, picking it up. “What’s this?”

Sherlock, now picking out a lemon, glanced at him. “It’s lubricant, John. Which is exactly what the label _says_ that it is.”

“Right. But...” John paused, unsure of what to say next, which was ridiculous because he was a grown man and he could surely just ask his sexual partner what he intended to do with the lube. 

“Put it back, if you like,” said Sherlock. 

John looked at him. He was fiddling with the lemon he’d chosen, looking uncomfortable. “Is this because you think I want this? Or because _you_ want this?”

Sherlock looked up at him, exasperated. “John, honestly, you think too much about _everything_. I thought it could be useful for a number of activities, and I thought we would discuss them at home, but if you’d rather we ruminate on our more desired sexual positions in the middle of this supermarket, then, by all means, let’s. I thought that I might like being penetrated by you.”

An older woman who had stepped up to examine the lemons shot them a look and bustled away. 

“Oh,” said John, voice strangled. 

“But if you don’t like the idea,” Sherlock continued. 

“No,” said John, slowly. “It’s not that.” John tried to determine how to go about saying that he’d never actually done that before. He didn’t know why he didn’t just say _I’ve never done that before_. 

Sherlock sighed and suddenly reached a hand out, pressing his fingers against John’s forehead firmly, rubbing just slightly. “Stop,” he said. 

John blinked in confusion, going a little cross-eyed with trying to look at Sherlock’s fingers. “Stop what?”

“Your face is doing that scrunched-up thing it does when you’re thinking too hard. You’ll have a headache by nightfall and I’m cooking you dinner and I will be very cross if you’re feeling too poorly to enjoy it. So stop.” Sherlock dropped his fingers, and John tried to make his face not-scrunched-up, although he wasn’t entirely sure what that meant. “You’re a doctor,” Sherlock went on. “I’d expect you’d be cleverer than most about locating my prostate. Now, Tabasco sauce.”

Sherlock scurried off, and John tried a small smile on the young couple blatantly staring at him. 

“John Watson, what is your life,” sighed John to himself as he turned and followed Sherlock. 

***

Sherlock had sent him to the beach. Well, Sherlock had sent him out of the villa, but, given Sherlock’s moment of terror that morning, John had decided not to go any farther than the beach. He was really a bit surprised that he’d been encouraged to leave Sherlock’s sight, but he also knew that Sherlock had been appalled by how quickly he had panicked and was determined to do better than that, and no one was more stubborn than Sherlock Holmes. 

So John sat on the beach with one of Sherlock’s true crime books and watched the ocean and considered Sherlock’s mental state. John had really thought that Sherlock had been getting better. The bruises had almost all faded now, and he’d gained back a bit of the weight that he’d lost. His eyes were clearer and brighter than they had been, and he laughed a bit more frequently, and he smiled more openly. He was still self-conscious about the scars on his back, but, having experience with scarring himself, John thought it not an unusual amount of self-consciousness. 

John had really started to relax a bit. John was _happy_. He was happier than he’d ever been in his entire life, here, with Sherlock, _with Sherlock_. He had forgotten, just a bit, that Sherlock was still recovering. Getting better, John thought, yes, but still nowhere near his old self. John thought he might never achieve old-self-ness, but John would settle for a close approximation of it. 

John would settle for a Sherlock who was _excited_ about things. There had been flashes of that excitement, and the enthusiasm with which he was tackling dinner was a welcome thing to see, but still, they had been in Anguilla for a while now, and Sherlock had never once complained of boredom. John was flattered that he was that engaging, but he knew he really wasn’t. He knew that a normal Sherlock would have at least woken John up at one point for a distracting shag. Sherlock hadn’t done that.

He loved Sherlock fiercely, and he didn’t want to pressure Sherlock, and he was very, very happy with how things currently were, but he also couldn’t help a pang of regret over the Sherlock he seemed to have lost, the Sherlock he might have to miss forever. He had never given himself a chance with that Sherlock, and he hated himself for the lost opportunity. But he supposed it went both ways. He supposed Sherlock lamented not ever having had the John Watson he had been before all of this had happened between them. 

“John?” came Sherlock’s voice from the doorway of the villa. 

John turned on the sand, squinting up toward the villa in the dying light of the sunset. “Am I allowed to come in now?”

“Yes,” Sherlock agreed, very properly, like he was suddenly the maître d’ at a snobby restaurant. 

John picked himself up, brushed sand off of the T-shirt and trunks he was wearing, and headed up toward the villa. Sherlock was waiting for him by the door, and he was dressed in one of his suits, wearing the plum shirt, which John had not seen since, well, since. 

“You’re all dressed up,” he remarked, in surprise. 

Sherlock glanced down at himself. “This is what I normally wear.”

“I know, but, I mean…” John came to a stop next to Sherlock and gestured to the shirt. “You weren’t wearing that before.”

“I was under the impression it was your favorite,” explained Sherlock. 

John blinked. “Oh. Yes. It is, actually.”

“Then,” said Sherlock, as if now everything should be clear, “come along, it’s all going to get cold.”

John walked into the villa but only made it one step before stopping dead. Because Sherlock had lit candles and put them on the table, and there was a bowl full of fresh flowers, and there was even a _tablecloth_ , pristine white linen. Sherlock stepped around John’s still figure, reaching for glasses of champagne on the table, handing one to John. 

“Where did you _get_ all this?” John managed. 

“Room service. Didn’t you see the tray come?”

“I just thought you were cheating with the food,” said John, dazedly. “I didn’t think you were…”

“I don’t _cheat_ , John. Did you want to toast?” Sherlock lifted his champagne flute expectantly. 

John tore his gaze away from the tableau, back to Sherlock, said, stupidly, “Oh,” and then recovered himself enough to say, “Oh. Yes. To us.” He clinked his glass against Sherlock’s and sipped. 

Sherlock sipped his as well, then said, briskly, “Now, then, have a seat. I’ll bring you your plate.”

John sat and stared at the bowl of flowers and the flickering candlelight. He felt as if his mind was moving sluggishly. He had expected Sherlock to turn out to be good at cooking, because Sherlock was generally good at the things he decided to be good at, but he had not expected all of _this_. 

Sherlock slid a plate in front of him, and John looked down at it. 

“Red snapper meuniere. Arugula salad. French bread,” recited Sherlock, although the food seemed fairly self-explanatory to John. 

John reached for his fork and knife, saying, “Thank you. It looks delicious.”

Sherlock sat opposite him with his own plate and picked up his own fork and leaned back in his chair and crossed his legs and generally looked so cool and calm and collected that John thought, _My God, he’s actually_ nervous _about this_. 

John took a delicate bite of his fish, prepared to lie, but he didn’t have to lie because it was _heavenly_. John’s eyes closed involuntarily, and he heard himself say, “Oh my _God_.”

“Is it good?”

John opened his eyes. “Good? Sherlock, seriously, _how_ have you let me be the one cooking all this time?” John went for another bite eagerly. “It is… _brilliant_. It is _breathtaking_. It is—”

“It’s fried fish, John,” said Sherlock, sounding amused. 

“No, no, it’s divine,” corrected John, around a full mouth. 

Sherlock had started eating now, looking more relaxed. “Glad you like it. Told you I could do it.”

“I never doubted you for an instant,” said John, before saying, “Even the _salad’s_ delicious. You’re unbelievable.”

Sherlock flickered a smile and ate his fish with a lot more delicacy than John, who was gobbling his down. Sherlock noticed. “There’s more, if you want—”

“Yes, I would love some more,” said John, immediately, standing. 

Sherlock stood and pushed him lightly back down into his chair, taking his plate from him and retreating back into the kitchen with it. Odd, because normally Sherlock pestered John to clear _Sherlock’s_ plates for him. He was cooking _and_ being helpful. 

Sherlock returned with more food for John, and John ate it more slowly, in companionable silence for a bit, enjoying the food and the candlelight and the way Sherlock looked in the candlelight. 

Finally John said, “What is all this?”

Sherlock took a second to answer, sipping his champagne. Then he said, plainly striving toward casualness, “I thought it was a date.”

“I got that impression, yes.”

Sherlock looked abruptly relieved. “Good.”

“Did you think I’d miss that? What with the candlelight and all?”

“I didn’t know what to expect. We’ve never been on a date before.”

“Well, other than all those times Angelo put a candle on our table for us.”

“Those weren’t really dates,” Sherlock pointed out, looking tetchy as he picked at his food. 

“I know,” said John, and brushed his foot against Sherlock’s calf by way of apology, the fabric of his trousers feeling decadently and expensively soft against his skin. “This is lovely. Thank you.”

Sherlock shrugged but looked pleased. He wasn’t really eating but John wasn’t surprised. Sherlock’s interest in food ebbed and flowed, and John expected him to skip a meal every now and then. 

“So,” remarked John. “If we’d met under different circumstances, is this what you would have done?”

“Define the different circumstances.”

“Met at a party.”

“I don’t go to parties.”

“Mycroft made you go.”

“Mycroft made me go to a party that you were at, too?” Sherlock looked dubious about the plausibility of that. 

Of course Sherlock wouldn’t just play along, thought John. Of course Sherlock would make him _work_ for it. “It was…a party honoring war heroes. Those wounded in action.”

“And why did I have to be there?”

“Because one of us was leaking classified information from our time in the field and Mycroft wanted to know which one. So you had to observe us in person.”

“What clues was I looking for?”

“Sherlock,” sighed John. 

“All right, all right, fine.” Sherlock waved his fork. “So Mycroft forces me to go to this party, I’m observing wounded veterans, and one of them is you.”

“One of them is me,” John confirmed. 

“I would think: What a pity, he appears to be heterosexual, wonder if I can manipulate him into a flatshare.”

“What if I was gay when you met me?” asked John, patiently. 

“Oh, well, now _that_ changes everything. You should have begun with that premise straightaway.”

“Sorry,” said John, trying not to look as amused as he felt, because Sherlock was now looking very thoughtful, suddenly taking the entire exercise seriously. “So would you have asked me out?”

Sherlock narrowed his eyes at John, clearly seeing a John who he was meeting at a fictional party and not the John sitting in front of him. “Yes,” he said, slowly. “I would have.” And then, more decisively, with a little nod, “Yes.”

“And would you have done this? Cooked me a candlelight dinner?”

“No,” Sherlock answered, musingly. “You wouldn’t like that. You’re old-fashioned. This is too intimate for a first date. You’re unimaginative when it comes to first dates. I would have just taken you to dinner. Neither too posh nor too shabby, so you’d relax.”

“You’d show off by deducing everyone in the room. I’d find it ridiculously hot.”

“Of course you would. You wouldn’t even make it through the pudding before suggesting we go off somewhere for a shag.”

“A shag? Really? On the first date? Do you really think I’m that sort of man?” he asked, teasingly. 

“Oh, I’d make you that sort of man,” replied Sherlock, confidently. 

“Would you? You think you’d have successfully seduced me on the first date?”

“The deductions would have done most of the work for me. You’ve an irresistible attraction to my voice. So long as I kept talking, I could keep your head positively reeling.” 

Sherlock had pitched his voice to a lower timbre so that it felt like warm velvet stroking over John’s skin, and John fought against the impulse to shiver with it. Sherlock knew, of course, the effect of that; he’d begun using it in bed with an unforgiveable ruthlessness that John adored. 

“So you’re—” John cleared his throat and took a sip of champagne so that he didn’t have to look at Sherlock being smug. “So you’re just going to deduce me to a seduction.” There. Better. Not a squeak at all.

Sherlock shifted about in his seat. “Do you think I couldn’t do it?”

If John was going to be honest, Sherlock had practically deduced him into seductions when John had still been clinging to heterosexuality. A gay John wouldn’t have stood a chance. “No, I think you could do it,” John said. 

“Anyways, as I said, the deductions were only going to do half the work.” Sherlock’s socked foot suddenly appeared on the seat, resting in between John’s thighs. John automatically made room for it while being simultaneously astonished. “That would do the rest,” continued Sherlock, and brushed his toes along John’s crotch. 

“Oh,” John managed. “That’s…” He wished it wasn’t obvious to Sherlock how hard he’d just got and how quickly it had happened, but Sherlock’s foot was in a very good position to measure such things. 

Sherlock’s lips twisted into a smile of filthy triumph. “Of course, the thing is,” he said, keeping his voice pitched low and pressing lightly with his toes. John’s hands clenched into fists and he realized he had clutched at the tablecloth. “At about this time I’d stop talking about the deductions. Or deductions about other people. I’d tell you how elevated your pulse rate is right now; I’d tell you how hard you’re breathing; I’d tell you that you’re attracting attention in the perfectly respectable restaurant I’ve taken you to.” Sherlock leaned closer over the table, the expression on his face maddeningly casual when his foot was doing _that_. John heard the strangled gasp he made, unable to look away from Sherlock’s pale, calculating eyes. “I’d tell you,” Sherlock continued, his voice dropping impossibly lower, and John’s hips actually made an involuntary motion in reaction, “that you have the most spectacular eyes I’ve ever seen. Do you know that? They’re so very you. Anyone would think they’re completely ordinary until they get up close to you and then they are _breathtaking_. I would tell you that all of that leashed strength you cover in unassuming jumpers has distracted me into innumerable fantasies when I should be thinking of other things. I would tell you that I want those surgeon’s hands of yours on me desperately. So what do you say?” Sherlock’s voice was an obscene purr drifting over him, and his gaze was heavy-lidded and full of promise. 

John could think of nothing to say. The combined power of Sherlock’s illegally hot voice and Sherlock’s illegally clever foot had wiped his head clean. 

Sherlock retreated just a touch, drawing his foot out of direct contact, and John actually scooted forward in his chair to get it back. 

“Is that good?” asked Sherlock, sounding faintly amused. 

John promised himself he would worry about wiping that smirk off his face later. “It is bloody spectacular and you know it.”

Sherlock dropped his foot back to the floor, wiggling about as he shifted it back into his shoe. John blinked, dazedly trying to pull himself back from the brink, telling himself he couldn’t just grab for Sherlock’s leg. 

“And that,” said Sherlock, with a grin, “is how I would have seduced you on the first date.” Sherlock stood, picking up their plates and inquiring, innocently, “Pudding?”

“Pudding?” John managed, eventually, when he’d got his voice back. 

“Yes.” Sherlock walked back out, holding two dishes of it. “Chocolate mousse. This is room service, I didn’t make you chocolate mousse from scratch.”

“There is no sodding way we’re having pudding right now,” John informed him, standing and pulling him in for a rough and demanding kiss. 

Sherlock returned it for only a second before drawing back, his eyes twinkling with mirth. “But John, the mousse is _delicious_ ,” he insisted, putting one of the dishes down on the table and sticking two fingers into the other dish before putting them in his mouth and very carefully licking and sucking them clean. 

John narrowed his eyes at him. “I’m going to murder you,” he decided. 

Sherlock laughed and darted out of his grasp, but John caught him easily, pulling him into an embrace and backing him up at the same time. “Are you upset because I cheated with the pudding?” Sherlock asked, all teasing coquettishness, and John marveled for a second at how gorgeous he was when he was playful and _happy_. “Because it really is excellent pudding.”

“Shut up about the pudding,” said John, and pushed him back onto the bed. 

He went with characteristic grace, still balancing the dish of mousse, and pointed out, “This is the wrong bedroom.”

John followed him onto the bed, straddling him and pinning him in place, leaning down over him. “You’re lucky it’s a bed.”

Sherlock smiled up at him. “You’ve no intention of murdering me.”

“Haven’t I?”

“Shagging me, that’s a different story,” said Sherlock, and suddenly swiped a handful of mousse across John’s face. 

John sputtered, pushing it off his face inelegantly. “Wanker,” he said, and Sherlock giggled, and he kissed the giggle out of him, thinking, _This is what Sherlock Holmes’s laughter tastes like. I bet no one’s ever tasted that before_. Sherlock’s amusement died after a moment, and he began to respond to the kiss in earnest, wrapping one hand around the back of John’s neck. John ran his mousse-covered hand up Sherlock’s neck and broke the kiss to lick up the trail it had left behind. Sherlock’s hand clenched in the hair that was growing shaggy on John’s neck, his nails against the skin, as he leaned his head back to give John more access. 

“Good call on the mousse,” John said, huskily, licking up specks of it on Sherlock’s face. “It’s delicious.”

“I thought we were shutting up about the pudding,” said Sherlock into John’s mouth, and then rolled them over, kissing John hard, pressing him into the mattress, hands already pushing off John’s trunks. “The lube’s in the other room,” he mumbled. 

“We are not stopping to get it,” said John. “For God’s sake, would you touch me already?”

Sherlock was apparently no longer in the mood to tease, because he did nothing but comply, and John groaned and pulled him back down for a kiss, wet and messy. Sherlock was squirming around on top of him, fighting with his belt and his trousers and his pants, and John thought that it served him a little bit right for wearing so much bloody clothing all the time. And then John stopped thinking because Sherlock managed to line them up beautifully, and the friction he’d been craving since Sherlock’s foot had started teasing him made his vision go white around the edges. 

“Bloody Christ,” he muttered, and Sherlock sucked at the skin on his neck, and John pushed, rolling them over and pinning Sherlock’s hands by his head. 

Sherlock blinked up at him. He was covered in smears of mousse, along his face, in his hair, and the plum shirt was pretty much a disaster, but John thought he had never looked so irresistible. John leaned down, spoke into Sherlock’s ear. “I thought it was my leashed strength that attracted you.” He nipped at Sherlock’s earlobe, and Sherlock made a pleasing, bitten-down sound. “And my hands on you, wasn’t that what you wanted?” John moved his hand, giving Sherlock exactly what he’d said he wanted, exactly the way John now knew he wanted it, exactly the right amount of pressure to make Sherlock’s back arch and his eyelids flutter, and John kept at it, relentless, because he wanted Sherlock as completely overwhelmed as he’d made John feel at the table. 

“John,” gasped Sherlock, and closed a hand on his T-shirt to pull him in for a kiss. 

“Is this how it would go?” John asked, his teeth against Sherlock’s ridiculously lush bottom lip. “Our first-date shag?”

“No.” Sherlock tried to shake his head and kiss John at the same time. “This is—better—it’s—better—”

John pulled his mouth away from Sherlock’s, suddenly feeling like he couldn’t breathe, like this was all too much for him and if he loved Sherlock any more then his heart would simply give out over how full it was. He pressed his forehead against Sherlock’s and panted with him and whooshed out, “You…” but he didn’t even know what he wanted to say to him. 

Sherlock said John’s name, desperate and begging, for _him_ , wanting _him_ , and John put his mouth at Sherlock’s ear and said, “I love you,” and Sherlock gasped and came. 

And then, not even pausing to catch his breath, with the characteristic spark of energy that always seemed to sweep over him after an orgasm, Sherlock pounced on John and pulled him into his mouth, and John didn’t even realize how close he’d been to the edge until Sherlock had pushed him so effortlessly over it. 

Sherlock crawled back up his body and murmured, “I love you, too,” and kissed him and tasted of chocolate mousse and John, and John’s head swam with contentment. 

Sherlock settled on John’s chest, tucking his head under John’s chin, and John concentrated on breathing. Once he’d got that under control he allowed himself to consider the fact that the bed was unpleasant, and that it wasn’t just them. Probably the duvet was covered with chocolate mousse. Sherlock had taken an entire bowl of it onto the bed with him and John had no idea what had happened to it. 

The thought John had after that was that he didn’t bloody care. 

Sherlock brushed a kiss over John’s chest and went to move away. 

John blindly closed a hand into Sherlock’s shirt and pulled him back, refusing to open his eyes because it seemed like too much effort. “Don’t,” he complained. “Don’t. Just pretend sex exhausts you the way it does all normal people and cuddle with me for a second.”

“John, we are a mess.”

“Mmm, but it’s a good mess.” John tried to stroke his hand through Sherlock’s hair, which he knew Sherlock loved, but his hair was a matted mess of chocolate mousse. Sherlock was vain about his hair. He was probably going to complain about that. Shower sex, thought John, and drifted into the fantasy. 

He was half-asleep when Sherlock extracted himself, too much asleep to do anything other than make a sharp sound of displeasure. 

“I’m coming right back,” Sherlock whispered to him. 

John wanted to make some sort of threat about what he would do if Sherlock didn’t come right back, but that would have required energy, so he settled for just making the threat in his own head. Sherlock came back with a flannel, cleaning with typical efficiency. 

“We need showers,” Sherlock said. 

“In a minute,” John slurred out. He wasn’t sure it was understandable. 

Sherlock curled back up on his chest and sighed, a sound of pure and utter happiness, and John opened his eyes, suddenly wide awake. Because this was what Sherlock had wanted all along. He liked sex, John was fairly sure he did, he initiated too much of it not to. But it wasn’t what he had wanted from John. He had wanted cuddling, he had wanted dates with candlelight, he had wanted to tease and be teased and tumble into bed laughing. They were really such basic desires, and John thought of who Sherlock was to the rest of the world, in his sharp, untouchable suits and his sneering prickliness. John thought that he wasn’t sure he could ever get Sherlock to understand how humbled he felt by being given the gift of Sherlock the way he was with John, the way he was with no one else, Sherlock in all the vulnerable simplicity at the heart of his complexity, and John lifted his arms and tightened them around Sherlock, pressing him as close as he could get. 

“What’s wrong?” asked Sherlock, surprised, wriggling a bit in the new grip. 

“I am going to love you for the rest of our lives,” John promised him, roughly. “I’m going to make you laugh. I’m going to make sure you’re never bored. I’m going to keep you safe.”

Sherlock was silent for a moment before shaking off John’s grip just enough to pull himself up and align them so he could look down at John’s face. He spent a long moment just studying John, and then he repeated back, “I am going to love you for the rest of our lives. I’m going to make you laugh. I’m going to make sure you’re never bored. I’m going to keep you safe.”

John flickered a smile at him. “Well, that’s that then. All settled.”

And Sherlock smiled back at him and then tucked his head back onto John’s chest.


	8. Chapter 8

Chapter Eight

John had a nightmare that night. Which really wasn’t fair because he’d been so starburstingly happy before falling asleep. But that was how nightmares worked, he recalled. As soon as you started to relax into your life, your subconscious whacked you over the head. 

It was a different nightmare. He didn’t dream of Afghanistan, and he didn’t dream of Sherlock falling in front of him. He dreamed of being in space, floating in the constellations. As John drifted by, Orion turned his head to look at him and bared his teeth in a snarl. John shuddered and reached out for Earth, but it was gone. He couldn’t find it. He turned in a full circle, but he couldn’t find _home_. And then he realized that he was in _space_ , and he tried to suck in a breath to call for help, but he couldn’t breathe because he was in _space_ , and he was drifting out, farther, farther, into the vacuum. There was no one to help him, he was alone, alone in the vast empty darkness, and he flailed, struggling to get back, but he didn’t know where he was getting back _to_ , and he woke on a broken sob with the sheets tangled around him and his pillow clutched in his arms. Sherlock was not in the bed. 

He lay in the dark and did some deep breathing and tried to push the nightmare away from him. He wasn’t alone. He wasn’t in a vacuum. He was in Anguilla, in a villa, with Sherlock, he reminded himself. 

He pulled himself out of bed and pulled on the trunks that had been discarded earlier that evening and went in search of Sherlock, finding him on the veranda, looking out at the constellations scattered over the sky over the ocean. Sherlock looked at John as he walked out onto the veranda and concluded, “Nightmare.”

John didn’t bother to confirm that. He half-collapsed onto the bench next to Sherlock and put his head in Sherlock’s lap, because he could now, and because he felt like he needed the contact, needed the comfort. There had been too many nightmares in his life without it. 

Sherlock seemed to sense what he needed, thank God, and ran his hands gently through John’s hair. John closed his eyes and breathed and felt himself begin to relax into the caress. 

There was a brush of pressure on his head. Sherlock leaning down to press a kiss there, John realized. 

“Sorry I left you alone in the bed,” Sherlock whispered. 

“It’s fine,” John mumbled back to him, because it really _was_. Sherlock slept when Sherlock slept, and there was something comforting about that to John, like Sherlock’s lack of rhythm was the rhythm John had been missing. 

It was dark, and it was quiet. Even the ocean seemed quieter than it was by day. John’s head was in Sherlock’s lap, so there was no chance of eye contact, even if he’d had his eyes open. Which was why he said, “Sherlock, I’m not complaining, and I’m also not pushing you, and understand that more than half of this is probably the nightmare talking. But are we ever going to go home?”

Sherlock was silent for so long that John didn’t think he was going to answer. At least his hands, after a slight hitch when John had asked the question, were still soothing at his hair. He said, finally, “I had a plan, you know. If I lived to see the day when I would be too old to be chasing after criminals—and that was a big if—”

“Because you’d never think you were too old to be chasing after criminals,” contributed John. 

“That, too,” allowed Sherlock, and then fell silent. 

John opened his eyes, looking at the starlight glinting on the water. “What was your plan?” he prompted, when it seemed as if Sherlock wasn’t going to continue. 

“I was going to retire.”

“You? Retire?”

“A little cottage somewhere by the sea. I actually really like the sea, I always have. This was a good choice for a holiday, in more ways than one. But yes, a cottage by the sea. It would be cozy and cluttered and lovely.”

“Sussex, maybe,” suggested John, after a second. 

“Sussex could work,” agreed Sherlock. 

“But what would you do? You’d go mad in eight hours and be demanding to be brought back to London.”

“I’d keep bees.”

“Bees?”

“I’d make honey. I’d be very good at it. Bees are fascinating creatures. They would keep me busy. I would transfer my energy from the study of the human underbelly to the study of the honeybee underbelly.”

“You’re serious about this,” John realized. 

“Why wouldn’t I be?” 

“I just never thought ahead that far.”

“What did you plan to do with your retirement?”

“Isn’t it obvious from the career choices I made? I didn’t expect to live long enough to retire.”

“You ridiculous man,” said Sherlock, and there was a wealth of emotion in the phrase. 

“Could I have a room in that cottage in Sussex?”

“You could have my room.”

There was a moment of silence. 

John said, “Are you telling me this because you don’t think you’re going to make it as far as Sussex anymore?”

Another beat of silence. 

“I don’t know if we’ll ever go home, John. I don’t know if we ever _can_. I don’t know if I’ll ever stop looking over our shoulders, waiting for the moment when they catch up with us. I don’t know if we’ll ever be able to stop running, you and I.” A moment of clear hesitation. “Is that okay?”

John looked at the stupid, hateful constellations and forced away the nightmare about drifting away from home. Because he _was_ home. Home was _here_ , wherever Sherlock was. 

John twisted to sit up, so he could meet Sherlock’s eyes as he said it. “I’m good at running,” he said, and kissed him. 

***

John was the sort of drowsy that came after a day of doing nothing. He had been determined not to let the nightmare cast a pall over the day. He had been determined not to let his worry over their futures—what they were going to do, whether the sort of life Sherlock seemed to imagine for them was even feasible—color the day. So he and Sherlock had spent the day in a good-natured stand-off over who would cook, which John had eventually lost, the way John had known he would. Sherlock had read out loud from one of the true crime books, managing to sound impossibly sexy even while saying things like _triple homicide_ and _decapitation_. Hell, maybe _because_ he was saying those things. They had gone for a walk on the beach to admire the sunset, although Sherlock had spent most of the time looking suspiciously at the people they passed, and John finally decided that they should just go back to the villa. Once there, Sherlock announced he was taking another shower because he thought there was still lingering chocolate mousse in his hair, and John, feeling luxuriously lazy, sprawled on the sofa and turned the television on. He didn’t even know what it was, and he was, in fact, dozing when Sherlock crawled on top of him. 

“Tired?” Sherlock asked, nuzzling into John’s T-shirt. 

“Mmm,” said John, because the nightmare had guaranteed a poor sleep the night before, and put a hand in Sherlock’s wet hair. “You’re getting me wet.”

“I like this,” announced Sherlock, decisively. 

“Define ‘this.’ Getting me soaking wet? Cuddling on the sofa? This villa? Anguilla? Me? Sex?”

Sherlock chuckled. “This nature show you’re watching.” And then, “Did you like _Skyfall_?”

“I never saw it.”

“What? And I saw that terrible movie just for you.”

“The last time I watched a James Bond film it was with you. I couldn’t bring myself to…” John trailed off, because he knew the rest didn’t need to be said. 

Sherlock let a moment of silence pass, and then he said, “How’s Harry?”

John stiffened. “What?”

“You haven’t mentioned her. How is she?”

“Why would you bring her up?” John demanded. 

“Never mind,” said Sherlock, shifting position quickly to press his mouth over John’s. 

John pushed him away. “No. Absolutely not. Don’t think you’re going to get out of this with a shag. Don’t even _try_ it. You don’t like Harry, you’ve never liked Harry, you never bring up the topic of Harry unless you want to gloat some more about her alcoholism and assert your selfishness over how every once in a while I have to devote a bit of my attention to her instead of you. Get off me.” He shoved unceremoniously, extracting himself from the tangle of Sherlock so he could get off the sofa. 

“John,” Sherlock began. 

John turned back to him from the doorway to the veranda. “No,” he said, furiously. “I’m here, aren’t I? Haven’t I made my choice? You win. But you don’t get to gloat about it.” He stalked out onto the veranda, where twilight had cooled the air and the breeze coming off the ocean was cool and brisk. He went down the steps onto the beach but stayed within the circle of the villa’s light. Because he might have been angry with Sherlock, but he wasn’t about to torture him by disappearing into the beach’s darkness.

“I didn’t bring her up to gloat,” said Sherlock from behind him. 

“You know when we used to have arguments in London and I used to go for a walk?” said John, without turning around. 

“No,” said Sherlock, sounding honestly perplexed. 

“Oh my God,” muttered John. 

“We didn’t really have arguments in London. Did we? Not real arguments.”

“We had real arguments. You almost never participated in them. You preferred to sulk on the sofa.”

“Oh, those things; those weren’t _arguments_.”

“They were absolutely arguments, and you need to go sulk on the sofa while I stand here and stop feeling angry.”

“I don’t know why you’re angry,” Sherlock insisted, sounding answeringly cross now. “I didn’t bring her up to gloat.”

John whirled on him. “You _always_ bring her up to gloat. _Always_. I mean, sometimes maybe you brought her up just to complain, but that was because you knew if you complained, I would eventually let you get your way, the way I always did, and then you could gloat.”

Sherlock fidgeted a bit on the veranda, and John could tell he desperately wanted to say something. 

“What?” John demanded. 

“I couldn’t always bring her up to gloat if I sometimes brought her up just to complain,” Sherlock blurted out. 

“ _Not_ the _point_ , Sherlock,” John snapped. “You haven’t asked after anyone else. Not Mrs. Hudson, not Lestrade. The first person you ask about from home is my sister who you always hated. And that isn’t fair.” John walked back up the steps toward Sherlock, saying as he went, “How much farther could I follow you, Sherlock? How much more can I give you? Why would you purposely remind me of the things I left behind for you? When you _knew_ that I was feeling a bit homesick to begin with?”

Sherlock stood his ground, not flinching as John approached him, but he didn’t say a word. He just looked at him solemnly, eyes pale flashes in the light spilling from the villa. 

“Did you do it on purpose?” asked John, when Sherlock stayed silent. “Because I will _not_ let you test me this way. You need to believe that I’m not going to leave you without manipulating all my sore spots, do you understand me? I will not be one of your experiments. ‘How much can I do to him before John will leave?’ And if you try it, I swear to God, Sherlock, I will shave your head.”

Sherlock blinked. He’d been completely impassive up until that last proclamation, and John was pleased that he now looked startled. And then he said, crisply, “I didn’t bring her up to gloat. I assumed she was doing much better, because I didn’t think you’d have come looking for me and left her behind if she hadn’t been.”

“Well, you’re wrong,” said John, after a moment. 

“She isn’t doing better?”

“I didn’t even think of her before I came looking for you. You’re still underestimating how much I love you. I didn’t even think of her. So thank you for reminding me.”

Sherlock had the grace to look a bit abashed. “I…”

“Never mind, Sherlock.” John scrubbed a hand over his face and turned away, collapsing onto the bench. “Just…”

Sherlock didn’t take the hint, didn’t leave the veranda, didn’t leave him alone. Sherlock said, “Mycroft sent me reports. On all of you. I haven’t asked after Lestrade and Mrs. Hudson because I know they’re all right. Or, at least, that they were the last time I spoke to Mycroft, and presumably still were when you left.”

John rubbed at his temples and said, “You have the strangest definition of ‘all right.’”

Silence fell, and the next time John looked Sherlock had left the veranda. He sighed and thought that maybe, just possibly, he had taken his guilt out on Sherlock. Although he was also fairly sure that Sherlock had deliberately asked the question to bring up the one thing from home that he knew John would truly have a problem leaving. 

John stood and walked back into the villa. Sherlock had left the television on but he had retreated to bed. The bed they’d shared the night before, which was not actually the bed they normally used. 

“You’re in the wrong bed,” John said. 

“Am I?” asked Sherlock, without turning over. 

John got on the bed. Sherlock didn’t turn over to present him with his back, but he did screw his eyes shut. John thought it was probably a sign of true love that he found Sherlock adorable even when he was angry with him and Sherlock was being a brat. 

“I don’t know how she’s doing,” John said. “We didn’t exactly… After you… We sort of stopped talking.”

Sherlock opened his eyes. “Why?”

“Because she thought I was an idiot for believing in you, and I got tired of having the argument.”

Sherlock seemed to process this. “Oh,” he said, eventually. 

“So I don’t know how she is.”

Sherlock was silent for a moment. “You could e-mail her,” he suggested. 

“I thought you were worried about giving away our location.”

“I was. I am. But we should probably get moving again anyway, and if it would make you…” Sherlock trailed off, looking awkward. “You could get Mycroft to do it. I know you’ve been sending him secret texts.”

“Only a couple.”

“They’ll have tracked your mobile if they were truly interested.”

“It’s a prepaid.” 

“They’ll have pinpointed where you made your last blog entry from.”

“Oh,” John realized, because he hadn’t thought of that. 

“Don’t worry. It was a lovely gesture, and it hasn’t seemed to endanger us so far.”

“Maybe they really do think you’re dead.”

“Exactly why we can’t go home.”

“And you trust my sister to keep our secret, if I e-mail her?”

“ _You_ trust your sister,” said Sherlock. 

John considered, and then said, “No. I don’t want to make her a target.”

“So you’d rather she think you’re dead? Taking a page from my book, Dr. Watson.”

“I know.”

“It’s probably the wrong decision.”

“Probably.” John sighed in frustration. “Let me sleep on it,” he decided. “I can always text Mycroft in the morning.”

***

John did not text Mycroft in the morning. In the morning, while Sherlock showered, he made eggs by way of apology for his behavior the previous night. When Sherlock got out of the shower, John put the eggs in front of him and started to say he was sorry and then Sherlock said, “We should go scuba diving today.”

“Sorry?” said John, as Sherlock tore a piece of toast off and popped it in his mouth, which was not at all the sort of _sorry_ he’d been planning. 

“You’ve been wanting to go scuba diving. Your Internet history is appallingly transparent about it. And don’t even pretend that you didn’t know I was going to spy on your Internet history.”

“Of course I knew you were going to spy on that,” said John, and sat at the table with him. “But I was looking up scuba diving a while ago. Why now?”

Sherlock shrugged. “Why not now?”

John wanted to ask if this was about the fact that they’d quarreled last night, and so Sherlock maybe thought they needed some time out of the close confinement of the villa. Or if Sherlock was feeling guilty and wanted to give John something he would enjoy. John wanted to ask if Sherlock was finally getting bored, but that would bring up how much Sherlock had been altered by everything he had been through, and John didn’t want to get into that. 

So John said, “Okay. Scuba diving.”

They drove to a place that offered scuba diving lessons. Sherlock insisted that he had no desire to try it at all and that he was just tagging along. He was busy studying the historic scuba diving equipment that was lined up in the waiting room while John filled out the information for the consent form, and that was when the couple they’d met during the snorkeling excursion walked in. 

“Oh, look!” exclaimed the female half. “It’s the other honeymooners.”

John glanced at Sherlock, who looked stiff and obviously displeased to see them. 

“I’m Sandy,” continued the woman, apparently oblivious to how much Sherlock didn’t want to shake her hand. “And this is Jim. My _husband_.” Sandy giggled. “Still sounds so funny to say.”

“Jim,” repeated Sherlock, his eyes narrowed a bit. 

“Nice to meet you,” said John. 

“I’m David,” said Sherlock, “and this is John.”

They all nodded acknowledgment of each other and exchanged handshakes. 

“So, David,” said Jim, jovially, “going to give scuba diving a try?”

Sherlock frowned. 

“He’s tagged along as a favor to me,” said John. “It’s very sweet of him, really.”

“Awww,” said Sandy, and looked at them with her eyelashes fluttering, as if she found them the cutest things to have ever existed. 

“Well,” said John, into the awkward silence that fell, “that’s my paperwork done. Suppose I should change.” He handed the paperwork in and followed an employee to the changing area. Sherlock followed, and John turned to him and said in a low voice, “We can leave. I know you don’t like them.”

“Not at all,” said Sherlock. “I find them very interesting.”

“No, you don’t.”

“I am _fine_ ,” Sherlock insisted, staunchly. “I’m not going to start hyperventilating.”

And he didn’t, either. He sat, silent and watchful, as John and Sandy and Jim had lessons in a swimming pool in preparation for their actual dive, and then he followed them out, and he did seem perfectly fine, right up until the moment when he caught John’s hand, as he went to get on the boat, and said, “Don’t go.” He wasn’t looking at John. He was looking past him, to Jim and Sandy. 

John had been waiting for that, so he didn’t argue. “Fine,” he said, and made excuses and jumped off the boat. 

“Are you upset?” Sherlock asked him, as he changed. 

“Not even a little bit upset, Sherlock. Don’t worry about it.”

Sherlock fell silent, until they were back in the car, and then, as he drove them back to the villa, he said, “That was suspicious.”

John hadn’t quite expected that. He had expected Sherlock to be annoyed with himself for being unable to let John out of his sight, for jumping at the drop of a hat. He had expected Sherlock to recognize that he was being paranoid. “What was?”

“That Jim and Sandy should show up there.” He said their names skeptically, with implied air quotes around them. 

“Well, it’s a small island,” John pointed out. 

Sherlock was frowning thunderously. “I didn’t like it. Not at all. I think we should leave.”

“Okay,” said John, slowly. 

“Now. Immediately. We’ll pack as soon as we get back to the villa.”

“Where will we go?”

“We’ll take the first flight out of this airport and discuss a final destination on the way. We’re going to need new identities, these have been compromised.”

John bit his tongue. He wanted to say that this seemed like overreaction to him, but he didn’t want to upset Sherlock any more than he already was. 

“I should have seen that earlier,” Sherlock bit out, talking more to himself than to John. “I can’t believe I let us stay still for so long. That was stupid, stupid, _stupid_. I’ll probably get us both killed—”

“Hey,” John said, and reached out a hand to lay over one of Sherlock’s gripping the steering wheel. “Stop it. You’ll definitely get us killed if you don’t focus on driving right now. It’s fine, we’re still alive, no harm done yet. We’ll switch identities and leave and gain our advantage back.”

“Except it won’t be an advantage anymore, because they’ll know we’re alive. I cannot believe how _stupid_ I have been. I apologize, John, I’m sure you thought you were putting your life in the hands of a more competent person.”

“I’m not putting my life in your hands at all. You are not alone in protecting my life. Or in protecting yours. I’m helping out with both causes.”

Sherlock glanced at him quickly, and then looked back to the road and nodded jerkily. “Yes. All right. Fine.”

“So we’ll get both of our lives onto a plane and we’ll start over somewhere else,” said John, trying to be soothing about it, even though the thought of this being the rest of his life, spilling out in front of him, was exhausting. 

Sherlock stopped the car near the villa, looked at it, and said, “John, get your gun out.”

John was startled. “What? Why?”

“Because you’re a better shot than I am, and there’s someone in the villa.”

John looked toward the villa. He could see nothing that indicated there was someone inside, and Sherlock was acting paranoid, and John couldn’t tell if it was better to go along with it or to try to calm him down. While he was trying to decide, Sherlock got out of the car and pulled a gun out of his inner jacket pocket. 

John swore and stumbled out of the car after him, grabbing his arm to slow him down. “Would you stop it?” he hissed. “I’m going in first. I’m the better shot, you just said.”

“Which means you can make a shot from farther away,” Sherlock responded in a low voice. “So I’ll go first because I’m better at close shots, and you stay in the background and shoot the intruder if I miss him.”

“If you miss him? Or if he shoots you before you can shoot him?”

“You’re not going in first,” said Sherlock, and shook John’s hand off of him and continued striding toward the villa. 

John followed after him, angry, pulling out his gun as he went. “Shouldn’t we be a little less conspicuous in our approach?”

“Where is there cover for us to hide in, John? That was the point of this villa.”

Which was true, John was just severely displeased, and then Sherlock broke into a sprint. John cursed him, because he knew he could outrun John easily at such a short distance because of those bloody long legs and if whoever was in the villa—if there was anyone in the villa—didn’t shoot Sherlock, then John was definitely going to. 

Sherlock disappeared into the villa quickly, and John realized the door must have been open, and Sherlock must have been right about someone being in there, but there were no gunshots, and he didn’t know if that was a good sign or not. He slowed and tried to think intelligently about what to do next. 

And then Mycroft Holmes’s voice called out, lazily, “Do come in, John. There is no need to imitate Sherlock’s overly dramatic entrance.”


	9. Chapter 9

Chapter Nine

“You are in dire need of my help,” was how Mycroft started, and John could think of nothing Mycroft could have said that would have been more disastrous than that. 

John had made them all tea, because that was what John did when he didn’t know what else to do. Sherlock and Mycroft had sat silently while John bustled around the kitchen. Sherlock was sulking, of course. And Mycroft was being Mycroft and taking pleasure in Sherlock’s sulk. John was wondering how furious Sherlock was going to be with him once Mycroft left, because John had basically promised that Mycroft wouldn’t bother them. 

Sherlock said, “You’ve put on weight,” and then sipped his tea. 

This, John thought, was going incredibly well. 

Mycroft ignored the jibe. “Your identities have been compromised.”

“I know,” said Sherlock, casually. “John and I were actually just leaving. You’ve delayed us. We’ll probably all be killed now.”

“Have you exhausted your nine lives?” inquired Mycroft. 

“Hang on,” said John. “How do you know our identities have been compromised?”

“Well, he tracked us here, didn’t he?” asked Sherlock, irritably. “If _Mycroft_ can track us then basically anyone can track us.”

Mycroft narrowed his eyes and then slid a dossier across the coffee table to John. John thought of sitting in Mycroft’s club, of getting a similar dossier of assassins, of laughing it off because his life those days had been so golden that he couldn’t imagine anything bad happening. Times were very different now. John looked at the dossier and felt sick, but he forced himself to pick it up and open it. 

“It’s Sandy and Jim,” he realized, in surprise. 

Sherlock looked at him. “I told you that.”

“I…” John decided he didn’t really want to tell Sherlock he’d just thought he was being paranoid. “I guess I don’t get it, though. They’re staying at this hotel. They could have killed us while we slept, at any time.”

“First of all, I’m offended that you think I leave us that defenseless, ever. Second of all, I think you were a complication they weren’t expecting. They’ve been trying to determine what to do with you.”

“Why wouldn’t the answer to that question just be: kill me?” 

“Because we’re dealing with Moriarty’s associates.” Sherlock’s voice was dry and bitter. “They seldom do anything that makes a large amount of sense. He seemed to attract universally insane people. Don’t you think, if they were rational and predictable, I would have been home long before this?”

“I think it’s time to accept help,” Mycroft suggested. 

Sherlock lit a cigarette. The first one John had seen him smoke. He was a bit surprised that Sherlock had had the cigarette and lighter on him. John would have called him on it, but he was loath to present anything other than a united front while Mycroft was there. 

Sherlock took a long drag and then said, “Mycroft, your ‘help’ was what got us all into this situation in the first place, so forgive me if I’m skeptical.” The smoke from Sherlock’s cigarette curled up to the ceiling. 

John looked from it to Mycroft, confused. 

“Then let me make up for that,” said Mycroft. 

“I thought you made up for that by helping me fake my death.”

“Yes, you thought that, but I always thought that was a stupid way to fix the problem.”

It dawned on John suddenly what they were talking about. “This is about you telling Moriarty everything.”

“Oh, you figured that out, did you?” Sherlock looked pleasantly surprised. “Very good, John.”

“It was a bit obvious, Sherlock. There were only two people in the world who knew as much about you as Richard Brook, and one of them was me.”

“I think, in the end, Mycroft knew rather less than he was willing to admit,” remarked Sherlock, wryly, and blew a smoke ring toward the ceiling. 

“Be that as it may, I do wish you’d let me fix this,” said Mycroft, firmly. 

“And how? What would be your proposal? Do you think you can take down the entirety of Moriarty’s network? Do you think your stupid operatives could accomplish what I couldn’t? And do you think you could ever even dare to keep the two of us safe whilst doing it?”

“What are your other options?” snapped Mycroft. 

“John and I are acquiring new identities—actually, that’s something you could help us with—and leaving Anguilla.”

“And then you’ll do that again? And again? And again? Until when? Until you finally don’t leave in time and one of you gets killed.”

“It’s better than being sitting ducks in London,” snapped Sherlock. 

“They already know you’re alive, Sherlock. They’re not going to stop hunting you. Come back to London. I can control London. Much more easily than I can control Anguilla.”

“Why do they _care_?” asked John, frustrated. “Moriarty is dead. Why should they care about either one of us?”

“Because they lost a great deal of money when I killed Moriarty,” answered Sherlock. 

John drew his eyebrows together. “You didn’t kill Moriarty. That bullet wound was self-inflicted.”

“That’s an opinion you’ll find not many of Moriarty’s associates share.” Sherlock leaned over and stubbed out his cigarette directly on the coffee table. John flinched in reaction but didn’t berate him.

“Perhaps we should ask John,” suggested Mycroft, silkily.

John looked up from the scar Sherlock’s action had left on the coffee table. 

“What do you think, John?” asked Mycroft. “Run, or London?”

“I think it doesn’t matter,” said John, stonily, “as long as we’re together.”

Mycroft looked at Sherlock. “He’s always been loyal.”

“And you’ve always seemed to think that was a flaw in my character,” remarked John. 

Mycroft sent him one of those unamused smiles that made John think he was really keeping track of every single time you annoyed him so he could justify it when he decided to have you killed. 

“I think we’re done here,” said John, because he never had been intimidated by Mycroft’s threats, stated or implied, and he wasn’t going to start now. 

“You’re wrong,” said Mycroft. “It’s just beginning.”

John stood. “I’ll see you out, shall I?”

Mycroft made a face that seemed to say, _Not worth the argument_ , and stood as well. He looked at Sherlock and said, “It _is_ good to see you. And you’re looking well.”

Sherlock glared at him in response. 

Mycroft sighed and followed John out onto the veranda, and John turned to him immediately, backing him up against the villa’s wall. 

Surprise showed in Mycroft’s face. “Do be careful, John, there’s a sniper about who doesn’t like to see me threatened.”

“Don’t try to put a wedge between us, Mycroft,” said John, keeping his voice low. “It isn’t going to work.”

“You know I’m right about the London thing,” Mycroft snapped at him. 

“I know that I love him. And that he’s kept himself alive this long.”

“Barely,” muttered Mycroft. 

“That he’d rather die himself than let anything happen to me. And that he deserves my trust. We will do what we will do. Stay out of it.”

“I really am only trying to help, John.”

“Sherlock’s right: You caused this entire mess. We’ll sort it ourselves, thanks.” John stepped past him, back into the villa, where Sherlock came walking out of the bedroom with their suitcases. 

“Whilst you were busy wasting oxygen threatening Mycroft, I packed for you,” said Sherlock, and handed him his suitcase. 

John glanced around the villa. He’d never unpacked, so his clothes would have been easy to gather together, and Sherlock seemed to have gathered up all of the books they’d had scattered about, and that was the only thing John really cared about. 

“Airport,” said Sherlock, brusquely, brushing past him. 

“Yeah,” agreed John, turning to follow him, then paused in the doorway, looking back at the villa, where Sherlock had pressed him against the wall and snogged him, where Sherlock had crawled onto his chest while he sprawled on the sofa, where Sherlock had made him dinner and seduced him with devastating efficiency. It wasn’t 221B, but it had been the site of many lovely things that John wanted to remember for the rest of his life, and it was bittersweet to leave it. They’d been _happy_ here. Sincerely, cloudlessly happy, in a way they’d never got to be in London, in a way they might never get to be in London. 

“Maybe we’ll come back,” said Sherlock, having returned to stand at John’s elbow. “Eventually. Someday.”

“Sentiment,” said John. 

Sherlock kissed behind his ear. “Yes,” he murmured. 

John took a deep breath and turned to Sherlock. “Airport,” he said. 

***

Sherlock chartered a flight to Sint Maarten, as there was a wide range of choices in destination from Sint Maarten and rather fewer from Anguilla’s small airport. The flight between the two was only ten minutes, and John thought that Sherlock would spend the entire time deep in thought, worrying about where they would get new identities and whether any of the other passengers were Moriarty associates. 

But, to John’s surprise, Sherlock turned to him as the plane began to taxi and said, “You would prefer to go to London, wouldn’t you?”

Yes, John would prefer to go to London, but he was willing to wait a bit before revealing that preference. Sherlock needed some time, and John thought Mycroft had been foolish to try to push Sherlock before he was ready. And the fact that they _had_ been stalked by some of Moriarty’s associates made Sherlock seem less paranoid and more brilliant. John was inclined to believe him if he thought it was safer not to be in London. 

“Look,” said John. “You’re the one who’s survived on the run all this time. I’m willing to defer to your—”

“But you think Mycroft’s right,” Sherlock cut him off. “You think we should go back to London.”

John considered. “Sherlock,” he said, finally. “I am _always_ going to prefer London. And if you’re honest about it, so are you. London is home. And you miss it. And I think you might feel a little better there. I think you might feel a little safer.”

“We wouldn’t be safe,” Sherlock corrected him, swiftly. 

“But we’d be erecting defenses in a place we understand. We wouldn’t get caught in Russia in the wintertime.”

“What are you talking about?” Sherlock asked, impatiently. 

“Never mind. A bit of world history you’ve probably deleted. If we go back to London, how much danger will Lestrade and Mrs. Hudson be in?”

“No more than they’re already in,” answered Sherlock. 

“And we’d be there to protect them, so they’d probably be in less danger. Moriarty’s associates know we’re alive, Sherlock. So let’s go _be_ alive. If we’re going to spend the rest of our lives looking over our shoulders, let’s do it from 221B, with your violin and your skull and your kitchen full of experiments.”

“And your chair. You miss your chair.”

“I do miss my chair,” said John, with a little smile. 

“We can’t get to London directly from Sint Maarten.”

“That’s okay. You promised me Paris. Let’s connect through there. I want to hear this French you’re supposedly fluent in.”

Sherlock leaned forward and pressed a firm kiss to John’s temple. 

“We’re going to be fine,” said John, hoping it would be reassuring for Sherlock to hear. 

Sherlock didn’t answer. 

***

They paused in Paris. John said it was unnecessary, but Sherlock seemed grimly determined to make a romantic holiday of it. He secured them an extravagant room—“courtesy of Mycroft, though he doesn’t know it yet”—and proposed to take John to dinner. They had barely sat down before John had decided that any more French out of Sherlock would be his very public undoing, so they went back to the room and didn’t come out again until it was time for the flight back to London. 

John thought it was a welcome interlude for them, between the panic that had marred the last few hours on Anguilla and whatever it was that was waiting for them in London. He sprawled on the bed beside Sherlock and ignored the Eiffel Tower view in favor of the view of Sherlock’s chest. Still thinner than John would have liked, still a bit too easy to see his ribcage, but his bruises had healed, and the gunshot wound was a thick, gnarled scar that John thought was the best they could hope for. He walked his fingers from rib to rib on Sherlock’s body, pausing to rest his hand over Sherlock’s heart, beating frantically against him. Sherlock’s resting heart rate was high. John thought it somehow fitting. Even when Sherlock was doing absolutely nothing, there was a frenetic quality about him that suited his bunny-quick heartbeat. 

“Please tell me you’re thinking something poetic right now,” remarked Sherlock. 

John chuckled. “I thought you were sleeping.”

“Because you’re terrible at telling the difference between me sleeping and me not sleeping,” said Sherlock, nevertheless sounding very sleepy. 

John leaned forward and pressed a kiss over his heart. “I was thinking about how high your resting heart rate is.”

“A doctor’s form of poetry, I suppose,” Sherlock allowed, placing a hand against John’s skull, cupping it, not quite a caress, more a _this fits here so nicely_ , resting against it. 

“I’m so glad you’re still alive, Sherlock,” said John, and he was surprised when it came out choked, surprised that he was suddenly blinking back tears. Where had that _come_ from?

Sherlock seemed surprised as well, shifting underneath him, struggling to sit up. “John…”

John shook his head, morbidly embarrassed, trying to push the tears back down, but now they’d risen up out of nowhere, he couldn’t figure out where to tuck them back into. They spilled out of his eyes and they would have splashed onto Sherlock’s chest if he hadn’t drawn back, pressing his fist against his mouth in an effort not to openly sob. What was _wrong_ with him?

“John,” said Sherlock again, sounding part quizzical and part as tender as John had ever heard him, as gentle as John had ever heard him, and it completely undid him. 

He reached blindly for Sherlock, turned his head into the curve of his shoulder and sobbed against his skin, and Sherlock was warm and alive and smoothed his hand over John’s hair and pressed ghost kisses along John’s temple and the shell of John’s ear. 

“I know,” said Sherlock, and held John to him more tightly. “I know,” he said. 

And John thought he did. 

***

John was the strongest person Sherlock knew. And Sherlock depended on that. From the moment he had met John, John had been a rock in the middle of the swirling chaos that Sherlock deliberately kicked up. If the tempest ever got a bit out of control, it was John that Sherlock turned to, and John had always been there. He might frown and shake his head and sigh in exasperation, but he had never flinched from anything he had ever been presented with. 

Sherlock had been trying to protect that when he’d pretended to jump off the building. The thought that he might have instead shattered it was such a terrible one that he refused to contemplate it. He pushed it to the back of the mind palace and piled old furniture over it, which was the only thing he could think of to do, because his deletion function had not been working properly ever since the day he had told John good-bye. 

And even though he refused to contemplate it, it was exactly what he was contemplating out the window of the plane as it flew over the Channel. 

“Have you thought about it?” John asked, interrupting this contemplation he wasn’t supposed to be doing. 

Sherlock didn’t think John was asking if he was thinking about how much he’d broken him, how it was his job not to do that anymore. He turned to him and said, although he hated to admit that he didn’t know, “Thought about what?”

“How you’re going to tell people you’re alive.”

Sherlock didn’t understand what the issue was. “I’ll just tell them,” answered Sherlock. “Presumably using the words ‘I’m not dead.’”

“You can’t just do that,” sighed John, and Sherlock recognized that tone of voice. 

“Why not? They ought to be happy.”

“That you lied to them?”

“But I lied to them for a good reason, and, look, there’s a happy ending. Of sorts.”

“Lestrade is going to punch you.”

“For being _alive_?”

“For _lying_ , Sherlock. For everything you did to us.”

“Oh, right, everything I did to _you_ , whilst I was off on holiday the last six months.” Sherlock turned to look out the window. 

“Are you going to sulk about this now?”

“I’m not going to sulk about this,” Sherlock denied, sulkily. 

“So you thought we’d get off this plane, go to 221B, and say, ‘Hello, Mrs. Hudson, can we have the flat back?’”

“Stop talking about this,” Sherlock commanded. “This is a tedious topic.”

“I think you should let me tell them.”

“John,” Sherlock whined. 

“I think it would help defuse the situation.”

Sherlock closed his eyes and wished to be back on Anguilla, alone with John in a villa by the beach, not thinking about any of this. Sherlock’s mind palace looked a bit like the villa these days, actually. He could hear the ocean crashing beyond the windows when he concentrated hard enough. 

“Sherlock,” said John. 

“Whatever you think, John,” Sherlock told him, because if he had to talk about this for another second he would be ill. 

There was a moment of silence. 

John said, “They _will_ be happy to see you.”

“But first they’ll want to punch me.”

“But that’s generally the first reaction people have when they see you, so that’s nothing new. Right back to normal, in fact.”

Sherlock smiled because he couldn’t help it. 

“That’s better,” John said, sounding pleased. “I don’t want you to stop doing that.”

“Stop doing what?” asked Sherlock, curiously, opening his eyes. 

“Smiling. You’ve been smiling more. More than I’ve ever known you to. I don’t want you to forget that, now we’re back in London. I want you to keep smiling.”

“Well,” said Sherlock, “that’s entirely up to you, isn’t it?”

“Yes, well, I’ll do in the absence of a good crime scene.”

“You’ll do always,” Sherlock told him, seriously. “The crime scene is just a bonus.”

“How did I never realize you were this much of a romantic?”

“I’m not a romantic.”

“I beg to differ.”

“I am a pragmatist,” Sherlock insisted. “I am a realist.”

“You are the biggest sodding romantic I’ve ever met.” John was openly grinning now. 

It would have been annoying if it had been anyone other than John. 

“Stop it,” Sherlock grumbled, trying to stay offended by the entire conversation. 

“I am very ready for this,” remarked John. 

Sherlock looked at him and wished he could follow John’s conversational leaps. “For what?”

“Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson,” John answered. “Part two.”


	10. Chapter 10

Chapter Ten

Mrs. Hudson was only mildly surprised to see him. “John,” she said, pleasantly. “How lovely. Did you just drop by for a cuppa?” She beamed at him, clearly delighted. 

And it occurred to John that so much had happened to him in the past few weeks that he expected everyone to be shocked to see him. In John’s head he had been gone a lifetime. But, truthfully, Mrs. Hudson was used to going much longer these days without seeing him. She had left a generic comment of comfort on his last blog entry, but, other than that, she had had no reason to think anything about him at all. 

It put into sharp relief, abruptly, how different John’s life had been before he left from the life he had led with Sherlock. There was no one who had known both of them as a pair who would have been alarmed by John’s long absence from their lives. Except perhaps for Sarah, for practical, work-related reasons, and John had thought to make up some sort of excuse for her before leaving town. 

“I…” _I dropped by to tell you Sherlock is still alive. And pacing around Regent’s Park smoking up a storm even though I told him not to._ “A cuppa would be lovely, thank you,” said John, instead of any of that. 

Mrs. Hudson fussed about in her kitchen making them tea while John stood in her sitting room and half-listened to her gossip and studied the photographs on her mantelpiece. He had been too grief-stricken the last time he’d been in the room to pay attention to such things, but, in amongst the photographs of her sister and nieces and nephews was a photograph of her with Sherlock. It must have pre-dated John’s time, as they both looked slightly younger, and Sherlock was not wearing his coat, which John associated with him inseparably. Mrs. Hudson was beaming, her hand tucked into the crook of Sherlock’s elbow. Sherlock was pretending to be irritated at the camera, but his eyes were warm. 

“Berk,” John muttered fondly to Sherlock’s sullen countenance. 

Mrs. Hudson bustled back in with a tea tray. “Oh, but you should have sat,” she clucked at him and then noticed which photograph he was looking at. Her expression grew soft and affectionate. “That was taken the day of the verdict in my husband’s trial. It’s the only one I actually have of the two of us together. He wasn’t one for photographs. Not that sort of photograph.”

“Sentiment,” said John, thinking of how he had torn the flat apart and exhausted the Internet and the hard drive of every acquaintance’s mobile in a search for a single photograph of him and Sherlock together that hadn’t been posed by press at a conference. He had never succeeded. He needed to fix that, now that he had him back. 

“Silly boy,” said Mrs. Hudson, indulgently, and gestured to the tea tray. 

John took her hand before she could walk away from the mantelpiece, and she looked at him quizzically. 

“Is there something wrong, John?”

“No, actually,” said John. “There really isn’t. Mrs. Hudson, I’ve been away. I’ve just returned.”

“I thought you looked suntanned,” she remarked, grinning at him. “Good for you getting away for a bit.”

“Do you remember the misdirected mail that you gave me that day?”

Mrs. Hudson thought, and John realized that the envelope had been notable to no one but him, that Mrs. Hudson had taken as much notice of it as she would have a menu for the Chinese down the street. 

“The last time I stopped by,” John prompted her. 

“Oh. Yes. Of course. It was before Christmas, wasn’t it?”

“Yes. Exactly. Mrs. Hudson, those were…” John took a deep breath. 

Mrs. Hudson looked confused. “They were what, John? Oh, my goodness, were they death threats? I do hope you told the police—”

“No, no, they weren’t anything like that. They were letters from Sherlock.”

Mrs. Hudson blinked at him. “Letters from Sherlock?” she echoed. “How could they be letters from Sherlock?”

“Exactly what I asked myself. But that’s what they were. I recognized his handwriting. They were definitely from him.”

“He sent them to you before he died?” said Mrs. Hudson. 

And John answered, carefully, “No.”

Mrs. Hudson slowly let go of the hand John had been holding. She looked at him for a second in silence. And then she reached for John’s hand again, holding it tightly. “John,” she said, and her voice was choked. “Are you telling me he’s alive?”

John nodded. 

“Where is he? Is he all right? Is he sick, or hurt, or—”

“He’s fine, Mrs. Hudson. A little worse for wear, maybe, but he’s fine. Or going to be fine. He’s better than fine.” John realized he was smiling, perhaps a bit tearfully, but Mrs. Hudson was smiling a watery smile right back at him. “I went and got him and he’s here with me now.”

“Here in London?”

“Here in London,” John confirmed. 

“Then why isn’t he with you?” Mrs. Hudson demanded. 

“I’ll text him,” said John, and took out his mobile. _Come at once if convenient_ , he texted. And he was only halfway through his follow-up text when the doorbell sounded. 

Mrs. Hudson dashed out of 221A and threw the door open. Sherlock stood on the front step, looking tentative and defensive. 

Mrs. Hudson said, “You _stupid_ boy.”

Sherlock’s eyes, uncertain, flickered to John, standing behind Mrs. Hudson. 

“Come in,” commanded Mrs. Hudson. “Don’t stand out there. It’s cold and wet and you need a cup of tea.”

Sherlock stepped over the threshold, and Mrs. Hudson closed the door behind him, and Sherlock seemed to relax immediately, glancing around the entry, which had not changed since the last time Sherlock had walked out of it. 

“I suppose you think you have a good excuse for all of this?” Mrs. Hudson asked him, sternly. 

“I _do_ have a good excuse,” Sherlock sniffed. 

“I’m glad John knocked some sense into you,” Mrs. Hudson continued. 

“Not quite how I got the sense into him, I think,” remarked John, because he couldn’t resist it, and Sherlock sent him a sharp glare. 

And then Mrs. Hudson distracted Sherlock by hugging him, tightly and fiercely. “It’s so good to see you, dear,” she said, against him, and John thought it was obvious from the tone of Mrs. Hudson’s voice that that was a vast understatement. 

Sherlock hugged Mrs. Hudson back, and said, “Likewise.”

***

They had not yet gone up to 221B. Sherlock seemed to be avoiding the moment, and John was following his lead. Mrs. Hudson was in the kitchen making a third cup of tea, and John and Sherlock sat at her small dining table, Sherlock looking a bit uncomfortable. John was a bit saddened by this. Sherlock had looked so _relaxed_ in the hallway, and John had thought maybe they might just fall back into the well-worn grooves of their former life as if nothing had changed. But things _had_ changed, and it was obvious from how quiet Sherlock was. It wasn’t the loud silence of his sulks; it was genuine quiet, like he didn’t know what to say. And Sherlock never really cared about knowing what to say, so the awkwardness was increased tenfold. 

Mrs. Hudson emerged from the kitchen with her cup of tea and took her seat and simply looked at Sherlock for a moment. 

Sherlock did not look back. He fidgeted with his teacup. 

“You’ll be moving back in, of course,” she said, finally. “Both of you.”

“I don’t know,” said Sherlock, uncertainly, his eyes sliding over everything in the room that wasn’t Mrs. Hudson or John. 

“What do you mean, ‘you don’t know’?” demanded Mrs. Hudson. “ _I_ know. It’s been too quiet around here. Could use some excitement.”

“That’s just it,” said Sherlock, and suddenly looked directly at her. “I’m not safe,” he announced, firmly. 

“What? Why not?”

“I mean that I’m not safe for _you_.”

Mrs. Hudson appeared mildly surprised at that. “Were you ever, dear?”

Sherlock frowned. “Mrs. Hudson—”

“Stop talking nonsense. The world isn’t a safe place. You didn’t cause that, and in fact you make it safer than most. So I won’t hear any more of this. You’re alive when just an hour ago you weren’t. No sulking, not today. There’s a flat upstairs with a violin in it and a skull who’s been very lonely.” 

That surprised the burgeoning displeasure off of Sherlock’s face. “Everything’s still there?”

“Of course. What did you think we would do with it?” Mrs. Hudson cocked her head at him quizzically. 

Sherlock just looked at John. 

“I was supposed to organize it for your brother,” John admitted, and cleared his throat. “I thought, eventually, I might even be able to do that.”

“And, in the meantime, Mycroft’s been paying the rent,” Sherlock concluded. 

“I didn’t have the heart to rent it to anyone else, anyway. I secretly always hoped John would come back. I didn’t even dare to hope that _you_ would come back, too.” Mrs. Hudson looked perilously close to tears again as she smiled at Sherlock. 

Which was probably why Sherlock stood and said, “Upstairs. I’d like to see it.”

“Go on, then,” Mrs. Hudson urged him, still watery and affectionate. 

Sherlock glanced at John, once again leaving his question unasked. 

“I’ll give you a minute,” said John, mostly because he thought _he_ needed a minute before walking back into 221B in a world where Sherlock was still alive.

Sherlock nodded, and John sat silently and listened to his footsteps up the stairs, slow and solemn, not the way he used to leap up the stairs, months earlier. 

“He’s a mess,” Mrs. Hudson hissed at him, as soon as Sherlock’s footsteps were safely inside 221B. 

“Oh, God,” said John. “Is it that obvious still?”

“ _Still_?”

“He’s much better, really.”

“What was he like when you found him?”

John considered. “Broken.”

Mrs. Hudson’s hands convulsed tightly around her teacup. “I hope you’ve killed whoever did that to him.”

“Not yet,” said John, and was surprised by the grim promise in his tone. He had been so busy that he hadn’t spent much time actively planning revenge, but the thirst for it was lurking under the surface, ready to be quenched. John looked into his teacup and tried to push down the bitter taste of helpless rage. 

He was startled when Mrs. Hudson took his hand, pulling it away from his teacup and holding it comfortingly between her own. “You’ll fix him. You did it before.”

John shook his head. “He fixed me before.”

“It was mutual. You didn’t know him before he met you, so you never fully realized that. But it was mutual. He’s back, he’s home, and he has you. It’s all going to be okay, John. Go up and see him.”

John wanted to believe her. He wanted desperately for it all to be okay. This was their second chance, and he wanted it to be absolute perfection. But Sherlock’s apparently justifiable paranoia made it impossible to relax, and John was facing down, at best, an entire lifetime of looking over their shoulders and waiting for the other shoe to drop, for all of it to be snatched away. 

Which maybe, he supposed, was just how life was when you had something as precious as a Sherlock in it.

John walked up the steps slowly, giving Sherlock plenty of notice that he was on his way. When he was halfway up, Sherlock played a brief flourish on his violin, almost a herald, and John smiled and took the rest of the stairs more quickly. 

When he walked into the sitting room, Sherlock was in his chair by the fireplace. The violin was on the floor next to him. Sherlock was apparently not in the mood to play. He smiled at John, a wide open smile, an Anguilla smile, and John felt the throb of nerves fade a little bit. It was hard to think that things would be anything other than fabulous when Sherlock smiled like that. 

“Good to be home?” John asked. 

“Are you going to gloat?”

“About?” John, surprised, picked his way through 221B’s familiar mess—never touched from the day when Sherlock had last walked out of the flat—over to his chair. 

“Being right about coming back to London.”

John sat. “Sherlock, _you_ told me yourself how much you missed London.”

“When did I do that?”

“You sent me letters. A lot of letters. In which you catalogued all the things you missed about this place.”

Sherlock looked thoughtful. “I meant you.”

“Sorry?”

“I missed _you_. Every time I described something I missed in those letters, what I really meant was that I missed you. So I didn’t think it would matter, where we were, if you were there, but it turns out that it does mean something, being in London.”

“Everyone needs a home, Sherlock. Even high-functioning sociopaths. We should get rid of these chairs.”

Sherlock twitched a frown. “I love these chairs.”

“But you’re too far away from me when I’m on this chair and you’re on that chair.”

Sherlock’s frown turned to a smile, another brilliant Anguilla smile, and John felt himself uncoil even more. He was home, with Sherlock, in his chair by the fireplace in 221B. This had all been an impossible fantasy, and it had come _true_ , and he was the luckiest sodding bloke to have ever been born. And then Sherlock crawled onto his lap, not quite fitting there, especially in the confines of the chair, and John thought that he was _impossibly_ lucky. 

“This chair is just like you,” said Sherlock, resting his head on John’s shoulder. 

“Is it?”

“Yes. Small and squishy.”

“Charming. You’re a terrible boyfriend. Tomorrow we’ll go tell Lestrade.”

Sherlock groaned. “ _You’re_ a terrible boyfriend.”

“That makes us even.”

“Did you tell Mrs. Hudson we’re shagging?”

“Er, no, because there is nothing I want to do less than tell Mrs. Hudson that.”

“Now suddenly you’re a prude?”

“Because I don’t want to discuss my sex life with Mrs. Hudson? You tell her, she’s your…mother figure.”

“Which makes it more appropriate for me to discuss _my_ sex life with her? Anyway, I have to tell Lestrade I’m alive.”

“Those two conversations are not at all the equivalent of each other.”

“Well, I suppose she’ll just work it out tonight when she hears us, seeing as I am going to shag you hard enough that you can’t walk tomorrow.”

“Thereby preventing us from going to see Lestrade. Two birds with one stone. I applaud your resourcefulness.”

“Not the only thing you’re going to be applauding,” promised Sherlock, and kissed him, and kissed him, and kissed him, until the world was whirling and tipping and that was when Sherlock pulled back and murmured, “Mycroft’s here.”

“What?” asked John, dazedly, and then the sitting room door was flung open and, indeed, Mycroft strode through it. 

He had absolutely no reaction to finding his brother curled up in John’s lap. He simply sat on the sofa, looking as unperturbed as if he were at a tea party. 

“You could knock in the future,” remarked John, irritated. 

“To what purpose? Sherlock will merely deny me entrance, and then I will come in anyway. I am simply saving the both of us time and energy.”

“He’s right. It’s his own fault if he sees more than he’d like.” 

“Sherlock,” said John, injecting mild complaint. 

“Oh, right, I’ve just discovered John is a prude, so perhaps we could devise a system. Perhaps you could just check the hidden camera feed before marching in here.”

“Hidden camera feed?” said John. 

“Don’t worry, John, it doesn’t extend to the bedroom,” said Sherlock, as if that was supposed to make him feel better, and then left John’s lap to go sit in his own chair. He slouched very far down and picked up his violin and plucked at its strings, ignoring Mycroft. 

“My, it’s just like 221B circa seven months ago,” remarked Mycroft. “Except with more…snogging.”

Mycroft said _snogging_ the way only Mycroft could, filling it to the brim with dubious disdain. 

John frowned and said, “Is there a reason you’re here? Or were you just in the neighborhood?”

Mycroft sobered. He held up a dossier. 

John’s stomach sank. “God, I hate it when you have dossiers.”

“Safety report,” said Mycroft. 

Sherlock didn’t seem inclined to take the dossier. He just kept plucking at violin strings. So John took it instead. 

“So far, no assassins have moved in.”

“I suppose that counts as a good day for us,” remarked John. 

“There is, of course, one who was already here and who is currently watching you from the empty house across the street.”

John looked up in alarm. “Should we close the drapes?”

“Because a bullet will be stopped by a layer of cotton?” Mycroft lifted an eyebrow at him. 

John scowled at him. “Because then maybe we wouldn’t be such sitting duck targets.”

“Don’t worry, John. Mycroft will have a sniper take him out at the first opportunity.” Sherlock picked up his bow. 

John glanced at him, then back to Mycroft. “Is that true?”

Mycroft took out his pocket watch and glanced at it, and the window in the building across the street abruptly shattered. John looked over at it, and Mycroft replaced his pocket watch and stood. “End of safety report. Good afternoon.”

John watched him leave and told himself that he shouldn’t be as amazed as he was. He looked at Sherlock. “So you’ve left security up to Mycroft?”

“No, I’m _supplementing_ security with Mycroft. I wonder if I could manage some Tchaikovsky for you. I’m going to be terribly rusty.”

John didn’t answer. John looked to the broken window across the street and wondered if this was their life now, killing people before they could kill them. 

“Yes,” said Sherlock, bringing his attention back to him, and played a scale. “This is, in fact, our life now.”

“Good,” said John, stubbornly, making sure that Sherlock understood he wasn’t going to start complaining about it. “If we have to kill them one by one then that’s how it’ll be done.”

Sherlock put his violin down. 

“Do you think Mycroft would let me have the honor if we come to anyone who ever laid a hand on you?”

Sherlock smiled. “Probably. If you request it. Mycroft has a soft spot for you.”

“I haven’t noticed that.”

“I have. He’s never had you killed, has he?”


	11. Chapter 11

Chapter Eleven

Sherlock was awake. Sherlock had not slept at all. There was too much to think about, too much to consider. He had been unprepared for the maelstrom of emotions being back in London—back in 221B—had provoked. He was unused to all these _emotions_. What did it matter where he was? London and Baker Street, they were just places, like many other places in the world. A city was a city was a city, and a flat was a flat was a flat. So why had he felt like hugging the cabbie who’d driven them from the airport, with his familiar accent and his recognizably terrible route? And why had he walked into Baker Street and felt something inside of him unravel, some tangle that had been sitting hard and heavy in his stomach smooth itself out? He was no safer in London than he had been anywhere else, and was possibly considerably less safe. But still, he had sat in his chair in his sitting room with his violin in his hand and had felt giddy with relief, thrummed with energy, exhaustion forgotten. 

His flat and his chair and his sitting room and his violin and his skull and his John, who was currently sleeping close up against him, his face pressed into Sherlock’s bicep. Because this was something different about London and Baker Street, John Watson in his bed, drooling a bit onto Sherlock’s skin, and it lent a sheen of unreality to it. Sherlock did not go to sleep half in fear that, if he did so, he would have to wake up, and this would all be gone. He had lain in this bed every night for eighteen months and wished for John next to him. He had been vague about what would transpire to get John there; all he had wanted was the warm curl of John. He had been sure that if he could just cuddle against John everything would be _better_ , things would stop being tedious, because there would always be John. And he had been right. He had been impossibly right about this. He had told himself it was a flight of fancy, a smitten daydream, lacking any grounding in reality. But no, he had been bloody _right_. John made everything better, John even made being on the run _better_. And John had one arm flung out over Sherlock’s waist, holding him into place, keeping him there. Even unconscious, John was determined to _keep_ him. It was the most comforting thing about John—that he would be too stubborn to let Sherlock leave. Sherlock would never be rid of him again, and that was the best feeling in the world. 

His flat, and his chair, and his sitting room, and his violin, and his skull, and his bed with his John in it.

Sherlock tipped his face toward John, breathing in the slightly cloying sleepy smell of him, and then the doorbell rang. 

John jumped beside him, and then snuffled closer, apparently too sleepy to be mortified by the drool. Maybe too sleepy to even notice it.

“Who could that possibly be?” he mumbled, snuggling deeper against Sherlock. 

“An assassin, probably,” answered Sherlock. 

“Assassins don’t ring doorbells.”

“A clever assassin might. It would do all the work for him. His target would just walk right up to the door, _et voila_.”

“Stop with the French, it’s too early in the morning for me to handle your French.”

“You can’t handle my French; it doesn’t matter what time of day it is.”

The doorbell rang again. 

John groaned. “Whoever that is, I hate them. It must be Mycroft.”

“Since when does Mycroft ring doorbells?”

“Since I asked him nicely to stop barging in on us,” John noted. As he was growing more awake, the level of miffed irritation in his tone was increasing. 

Sherlock wriggled away from John, ignoring John’s adorable little protesting noise. “I’ll go let our assassin in.”

“Sherlock,” complained John. 

“It’s probably not an assassin,” Sherlock promised him, as he pulled on a pair of pajama bottoms. 

John opened his eyes and looked at him. “Isn’t Mycroft supposed to have this place surrounded by snipers?”

“You trust Mycroft to do his job competently?”

“Tell Mycroft to have his snipers shoot anyone who shows up at our doorstep at an indecent hour of the morning again.”

“It’s half-seven, John, not the crack of dawn. Go back to sleep, you’ve woken up grumpy.”

John turned over, presenting Sherlock with his back. “Tell whoever it is to go away, then come back to bed.”

Sherlock smiled at the warm bundle of John Watson huddled under Sherlock Holmes’s blankets, and thought how, right there, in front of him, was the most precious, most important, most valuable, most amazing, most incredible, most treasured thing in all of London, probably on the entire planet: a grouchy, cranky series of cotton-covered lumps. 

Sherlock leaned over and pressed a kiss onto John’s dear head and said, “I love you.”

“Yes,” said John, drowsily. “Love you, too.”

Sherlock left him sleeping in his bed and emerged from the bedroom, tying his dressing gown—his dressing gown, his bed, his John—just as the doorbell rang again and Mrs. Hudson poked her head out of 221A. 

“Don’t worry, Mrs. Hudson, I’m handling it,” Sherlock told her, jogging down the stairs. 

“Thank you, dear. I didn’t want to wake the two of you so early, if the doorbell hadn’t already done it. I’m sure you needed your sleep after last night.” She ducked back into 221A before Sherlock could respond to that. 

_Tell Mrs. Hudson we’re shagging: check_ , thought Sherlock, opening the door. 

On Lestrade.

_Tell Lestrade you’re still alive: check._

***

“Bloody hell,” breathed Lestrade, blinking at him as if he was looking at a ghost. 

Sherlock supposed that, to Lestrade, he basically was. 

“It’s true,” said Lestrade. “I didn’t think it was, but it’s true.”

Sherlock was a little annoyed. Surely Lestrade could have waited until a normal hour for this little confrontation. He wanted to tell Lestrade that he had a warm bundle of John waiting for him in his bed and to come back later, but he could envision John frowning at him if he told him that was what he had done, so instead he said, resigned, “Come in.”

“Come _in_?” echoed Lestrade, disbelievingly. “You’ve been dead seven months and this is what you have to say for yourself? ‘Come in’?”

Sherlock considered. “Yes,” he decided. 

Lestrade continued to look at him in astonishment and then stepped into the hall. Sherlock closed the door, relieved to trap the cold back on the other side of it. Lestrade reached out and touched Sherlock’s forehead, tentatively, pressing. 

Sherlock frowned and ducked his head away. “I’m not a ghost.”

“How are you real? How are you alive? There was an inquiry, Sherlock. There were…autopsy results. There were…John testified. _John_. Stood in the box and refused to cry while he described how you plummeted to the pavement and had no pulse and you were _dead_. Oh my God, _John_. Does John know?”

God, thought Sherlock, this was going to be bloody tedious. “Come upstairs,” he said, and walked up the stairs. 

After a moment Lestrade followed him. Sherlock sat in his chair by the fireplace and considered whether he ought to make tea. Sherlock was quite capable of making tea, of course, he just didn’t see the point of doing it when John did it for him so reliably. Maybe Lestrade would volunteer to make tea. 

But Lestrade only stood, just inside the sitting room doorway, and gaped at him. 

Sherlock looked back, waiting for him to say something. 

Lestrade’s expression abruptly turned thunderous. “All right, stop this. Just stop. Stop pretending I’ve gone mad and like this is perfectly normal that you’d be sitting up here in this room, _alive_. What the hell did you do when you jumped off that building?”

“Saved your life,” answered Sherlock, because it was true. 

“Where have you been?” Lestrade crossed over to sit in John’s chair. Sherlock wanted to tell him to get out of that chair, but thought that probably wouldn’t be well-received in Lestrade’s current state. “Do you have any idea what it’s been like here? I was _suspended_ for a little while.”

“You were cleared,” said Sherlock, because it was true. 

“That’s not the point. You broke Mrs. Hudson’s heart, you know. You broke _John’s_ heart. What the bloody hell do you expect to say to _John_ about all of this?”

Sherlock opened his mouth, but he didn’t have to say anything at all, because John’s voice called, “Sherlock?” from the direction of Sherlock’s bedroom, and then, “Who was at the—” John entered the sitting room, dressed in boxers and a T-shirt, and looked at Lestrade. “Door,” he finished, unnecessarily. 

Lestrade was now staring at him in amazement. “You _knew_? That was all just an _act_?”

John laughed bitterly. “Oh, no, that was definitely not an act. I can’t have this conversation without tea.” He looked at Sherlock. “I don’t suppose you made any?”

Sherlock just looked back at him. 

“Right,” sighed John, and walked into the kitchen. 

“I…” said Lestrade, looking too stunned to say anything else. 

Sherlock thought maybe he needed to get this conversation moving. “Moriarty had snipers, on you and John and Mrs. Hudson. He threatened to kill all of you unless I jumped off the roof. So I jumped off the roof. Not really, of course. It was a complicated scheme, but it worked perfectly, and everyone thought I was dead, except for Mycroft and Molly. Most importantly, Moriarty’s men thought I was dead, so all of you were safe. I’ve spent the past few months trying to track down Moriarty’s associates and eliminate them. It’s an ongoing project. But John found me, and I thought it advisable we come back to London together. Does that answer all your questions?”

Lestrade stared at him. “It…no. You faked your own death? With the help of Mycroft and _Molly_?”

Sherlock wanted to snap, _Yes, didn’t I just say that?_ But instead he forced himself to just say, shortly, “Yes.”

“Anyone for toast?” asked John, from the kitchen doorway. “Well, really I’m just asking you, Greg. Sherlock, you’re definitely having some toast.”

“Not unless there’s jam, too.”

“Aren’t you lucky Mrs. Hudson loves you? She stocked the fridge for us.” John paused. “Actually, when did she…”

“Best not to think too hard about it, John,” Sherlock told him, drily, watching John draw the conclusions about what they must have been doing when Mrs. Hudson slipped into the flat with food. 

John disappeared back into the kitchen. 

Sherlock looked back to Lestrade, who still looked dazed. “How did you know I was still alive?”

“You used your passport,” Lestrade answered, vaguely. “It was flagged… There was an alert…and then there was CCTV footage… John found you? How did he know to look for you?”

Sherlock chose his words carefully. “I sent him a letter.”

“A letter? ‘Dear John, I’m alive, come and fetch me’?”

“Roughly,” answered John, coming in with a full tea tray and putting it down on the coffee table. 

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Lestrade asked in wonderment. 

“Tell you that I thought Sherlock was alive? You’d have thought me mad. You’d have told me it was a Moriarty hoax. Hell, _I_ thought I was mad. But there was a chance that he was out there, so I went and I got him.” John shrugged, as if it had been nothing, and snagged tea and toast and went to sit at the desk. 

Lestrade shook his head as if to clear it. “And now what? Now you just…go back to normal?”

“Better than normal,” said John, around a bite of toast, licking jam off his thumb. 

“Everyone’s still in a great deal of danger,” Sherlock said. “Moriarty’s men are all still out there.”

“Doing what? What’s the objective?”

“I have no idea. If things were simple, don’t you think I would have sorted it by now?” Sherlock asked, impatiently. 

Lestrade looked at John. “What do you mean ‘better than normal’?”

“He came back from the dead, Greg. There’s absolutely nothing ‘normal’ about that, is there?”

***

“You know,” remarked John, “this is a much nicer bedroom than mine.”

Sherlock chuckled into his skin. It was dark in the room, and Sherlock chuckling in the dark, warm and solid against him, relaxed and comfortable, was pretty much John’s favorite thing. There was something about the intimacy of the darkness that made it seem like Sherlock was more his and his alone then he was at other times, when the demands of the world might start to intrude upon him and pull him away. 

“This is a nicer bed than mine, too.”

“John. Why would I have reserved the better room and better bed for someone else?”

“You could have done it for the flatmate you claim you fell in love with at first sight.”

“If you liked your bed too much, how would I ever coax you into mine?” asked Sherlock, and John could feel the curve of his smile against his skin. 

“By being bloody gorgeous?” suggested John. 

“Yes, because that was so effective,” remarked Sherlock, and John could tell he was trying not to sound bitter about it. 

John paused and considered a response. Then he said, “You should have mentioned you had a better bed. I enjoy sleep, you know. And you never do it; this bed is wasted on you.”

“I didn’t want to encourage the idea that you should use this bed for _sleep_ ,” said Sherlock. “Oh, speaking of, Mrs. Hudson knows we’re shagging.”

“Of course she does,” sighed John. 

“And Lestrade knows I’m alive. So that was a productive day, frankly.”

“I should go for a couple of pints with Lestrade.”

Sherlock was silent for a moment. “Why?”

“I don’t know.” John tried to gather his feelings about it. “Just think I should. I think it would do the both of us good to talk it through.”

“Are you going to tell him we’re shagging?”

“You’re obsessed with my telling people about us.” And then, after a second, “I’m not trying to keep us a secret. Sorry. Did I give you the idea that I’m ashamed of us? Because I’m not, I just—”

“I didn’t think you were.”

“Hand-in-hand in Regent’s Park,” John promised him. “I haven’t forgotten.”

Sherlock kissed John’s chest and then pillowed his head there, and John let his fingers idly play with Sherlock’s curls. They needed to be trimmed desperately. 

“Molly,” said John, after a second. 

“Molly,” Sherlock agreed, after a second. 

John was silent for a moment. “Why Molly?”

Sherlock was silent for an answering moment. “She offered. And…I was in a position where I needed help.”

John let that sink in for another moment. “Why Molly and not me?” he asked, which was really what he’d meant in the first place. 

“Because you were what I was trying to save. You were why I needed help. If I didn’t execute it perfectly, and something happened to you, I’d never—Molly was the one Moriarty overlooked. Molly was the one…Molly was the one that I overlooked, admittedly. I could ask Molly to help me, and she would stay safe, she would be safe, because people don’t suspect Molly, they just don’t. Did you?”

John thought of Molly, eyes wet and wide, holding his hand briefly at Sherlock’s terrible funeral and then fleeing from him, head down, and John had assumed it had been grief, not guilt. “No,” said John. “But then it never even occurred to me that you might still be alive. I told myself the entire idea was unhealthy fantasy on my part.”

“And then, once you knew, you still didn’t think of Molly. You went to Mycroft right away. But never Molly. She was perfect.”

“In a terrible way,” said John, feeling a little horrified with himself for having never thought of her, for making her so insignificant in the scheme of things. 

“Mycroft says she has a new boyfriend, not a criminal mastermind, and she’s very happy with him.”

“I wouldn’t know. I haven’t spoken to her since…I lost touch with…everyone, basically. I just…stopped talking. Actually, it’s interesting, but the last time I spoke to Greg, do you know what I told him?”

Sherlock said nothing, and John filled the silence. 

“I told him I was in love with you,” John said. “He took me out, about six weeks after… Dragged me out, really. Said I had to get out, had to socialize. The ‘move on’ was implied, of course. I think he thought maybe I’d sit at a pub and maybe I’d get drunk enough to cry into my beer a little bit. But I sat there with beer I didn’t drink, feeling sick, and it was a terrible evening. Greg sat next to me and we didn’t say a single word, just watched the football, until I said, suddenly, ‘I was in love with him.’ And Greg said, ‘I know.’ And that was the last time I’d seen him until today. So I think Greg already knows we’re shagging.”

There was a long pause before Sherlock said, lightly, “Next time you go for pints with him, I want you to make much of how fantastic I am in bed.”

“Conceited,” said John. 

“He knew I was in love with you, too,” Sherlock murmured. 

“He didn’t say that,” said John, surprised. “Did you tell him?”

“I didn’t have to. The day after he met you, he said to me that he’d only seen me look at two other things with half the interest I showed you. I told him he was being ridiculous and to leave me alone, and he laughed at me, because he’s annoying, so I knew he knew he was right about that.”

“John Watson, more interesting than a serial killer.”

“And good cocaine,” Sherlock yawned, and only Sherlock could yawn while saying that. 

“Well, I guess it’s romantic in its own way,” John decided. “He didn’t mention it to me, when I told him.”

“Maybe he thought it would have served no purpose at that point. You were already beating yourself up over all the wasted opportunities. It would have been worse if you’d known I reciprocated. Maybe he was being kind. It’s a weakness he has.”

“I love when you pretend you’re not kind.”

“I’m not.”

“Sherlock, you jumped off a building to save the lives of the people you loved. That’s some definition of kindness.”

“Such lies,” protested Sherlock, sleepily. “If you start spreading rumors about me, I’ll tell everyone one of the embarrassing pieces of information I’ve gathered about you.”

“What embarrassing pieces of information?”

“Now, now, what would be the fun in telling you that in advance?”

John laughed. “Go to sleep, you ridiculous man,” he said. 

“Don’t tell anyone I sleep, either,” mumbled Sherlock. 

“God forbid anyone think you’re human,” commented John. 

“Yes,” said Sherlock, nuzzling at John. And then he settled and slept. 

***

The next day over breakfast John watched Sherlock slather jam onto toast and devour the paper, and eventually he offered, “Did you tell Molly you were coming back?”

“I tried to tell the bare minimum of people that I was coming back, John,” Sherlock replied, not looking up from the paper. 

“Then we’re going to see Molly today,” said John, firmly. 

Sherlock looked up, pout firmly in place. “John—”

“Must tell Molly. After everything she did for you? You should take her flowers.”

“I sent her a coffee mug with cats on it.”

“You what?”

“She likes coffee, and cats.”

“You are rubbish when it comes to gifts, aren’t you?”

“Waste of time,” said Sherlock. 

“Sentiment,” John replied. 

“Exactly,” Sherlock agreed, and then softened the sharpness of the proclamation by sliding his bare foot against John’s calf under the table. 

So it was later than John had intended when they finally got to the morgue to see Molly. 

Molly didn’t appear surprised to see Sherlock. But then, John realized, Molly should have been the least surprised person in London to see Sherlock Holmes alive. When they walked into the morgue, Molly looked up from an autopsy she was leaning over and burst into one of her wide, shy smiles. 

“Oh, look at both of you!” she exclaimed. “It’s just like old times.” She walked over to them, and looked about to give John a hug, and then drew back, remembering that she had bits of blood and gore on her, and she said, giggling in that nervous way John recalled, “Oh, sorry, I…” She trailed off, gesturing to herself. 

“It’s good to see you, Molly,” said John, and meant it. He wasn’t sure why he had ever thought it was a good idea to cut himself off from all the people who had been part of his life with Sherlock. How had he thought it would help his recovery to be as lonely as he had made himself? John recognized that he had not been thinking clearly at all, which shouldn’t have been a shock to him, and yet he’d thought he’d been doing so well. 

Sherlock was a barely leashed bundle of energy next to him, vibrating with it. Molly seemed to sense it, looking at him. Sherlock’s eyes were on the body. 

“Nothing terribly interesting, I’m afraid,” she told him, brightly. “She drowned in a pool. Seems fairly straightforward. No secret poisonings or anything like that.”

Sherlock wandered over to the body, peered down into the open chest cavity avidly. John thought how he sometimes missed surgery, but he thought he never missed the inside of a human body the way Sherlock clearly did. “Have you anything interesting?” he asked, with such forced casualness that no one would have been fooled for even a second. 

Molly glanced at John, then answered, “Not your level of interesting, no.”

John made a mental note to use the opportunity of pints with Lestrade to coax him into letting Sherlock back in on some cases. The level of interest Sherlock was displaying in the idea of falling back into old habits was heartening to John. It was easy, at that moment, to pretend that nothing had ever happened. 

And then Molly said, “So are you going to tell everyone you’re alive?”

“I’ve told John and Mrs. Hudson and Lestrade,” Sherlock answered, now looking into the body’s ears. 

“Right, but…what about the rest of London?”

“What business is it of theirs?” Sherlock straightened away from the body and frowned at Molly. 

“Well,” said Molly, lamely. “You know.”

“She’s right, Sherlock. You were front-page news when you jumped. We should probably be talking to somebody about how to handle this. Mycroft, maybe.”

Sherlock rolled his eyes. “Your solution is always to talk to Mycroft.”

“My solution is to make Mycroft do as much legwork as I possibly can, yes.”

Sherlock seemed to like that characterization. He smiled at John fondly. “Maybe we will ask Mycroft,” he said, and then turned on his heel and walked abruptly to the opposite end of the morgue, pulling out drawers of bodies noisily. John wanted to tell him to stop behaving like a lunatic and leave the dead people alone, but he liked how _Sherlockian_ it all was. 

“Is everything…” Molly began, keeping her voice low. 

John glanced at her. “Everything…?” he prompted. 

“He was convinced it would be dangerous for you. If he stayed. I couldn’t talk him out of it. I hope you’re not angry?”

“I’m not,” said John, honestly. Any lingering resentment he felt for any of it was buried so deeply beneath gratitude and adoration that it barely registered for him. 

“And everything is sorted now? You’re safe?”

“I think I’m as safe as a human being can be. And I think…” John left it at that. He decided that he didn’t need to tell Molly that he thought he had primarily convinced Sherlock that the increased danger was worth the fact that they were _together_. 

“He loves you so much,” Molly said, with an insistence to her voice that John had never heard before and had him looking away from Sherlock to focus on her. She looked serious and determined. “I hope you understand how much.”

“I do,” said John, after a beat. 

“Molly!” Sherlock called from across the room. “This body here.” He prodded it with his finger. 

“Sherlock,” John sighed. “Don’t.”

“That’s Mr. Emerson,” said Molly, and hurried across the room to save Mr. Emerson from Sherlock, and John watched their negotiations over the body and thought that everything was so _normal_. If this was all a dream, he never wanted to wake up.


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't normally do this but I suspect some of us might need this tonight: This chapter has some lovely, soothing Johnlock at the beginning, but it ends in a tense place and I just want you to know: This fic has a happy ending. Actually, it's got a ridiculously romantic ending where Sherlock Holmes gets absolutely everything he ever wanted. I promise.

Chapter Twelve

The first three days after Mycroft broke the news for them, they could go nowhere. 221B was surrounded by paparazzi. Sherlock felt that the paparazzi reliably kept the assassins away, because killing him and John in the middle of a press maelstrom seemed unnecessarily messy when they could just wait for the furor to die down. So he looked upon this time as a holiday and kept John in bed as much as he could. John was disobedient and sometimes got out of bed and even got _dressed_ in order to socialize with Mrs. Hudson and Lestrade and Mycroft— _most_ annoying of all—but Sherlock was pleased with the proportion of time that he got to spend in bed with John, sprawled next to him so he could watch him sleep or pillowed against him so he could feel him sleep. 

When the fourth morning dawned, the paparazzi seemed to have mainly lost interest. John peeked out the window, turned to Sherlock, and said, “You are getting a haircut.”

And because Sherlock agreed that he was in desperate need of a haircut, he allowed John to drag him to a barber. John seemed to think he was getting a haircut, too, but Sherlock made sure it was only the barest of trims because he liked John’s hair slightly shaggy and unkempt, he found it oddly endearing for reasons he couldn’t articulate. 

After the haircut, they stepped outside together and Sherlock turned up the collar of his coat and scanned the street for anything concerning, and John said, “Let’s have dinner at Angelo’s.”

Sherlock was momentarily surprised, and then realized he shouldn’t have been, so he just beamed a smile at John. 

Angelo greeted them effusively at the door. He wagged a finger at Sherlock as if he were a misbehaving puppy and said, “I knew you couldn’t be dead! I knew it had to be just a trick!” He clapped a hand enthusiastically on Sherlock’s shoulder and looked at John and said, “This one, eh?” shaking his head over the fact of Sherlock. 

“Yes,” said John, having the nerve to look amused. “This one indeed.”

“Keeps you on your toes, doesn’t he?”

“One way of putting it,” agreed John. “I’d not have it any other way.”

Sherlock looked at John and wished he could learn how to look at John without an entire volume of saccharine poetry’s worth of stars shining in his eyes. 

Angelo said, “Your usual table?”

Sherlock glanced at it, at the windows all around it, and shuddered at the thought of the snipers he might not be able to see, of John’s head in the middle of a target scope somewhere. He hated the fact that he thought of it, hated the fact that he _had_ to think of it. 

And while Sherlock was thinking these things and hating the fact that he was thinking these things, John, as he usually did, did exactly what Sherlock would have wished and said, “Actually, Angelo, could we have a more private table this time? Paparazzi, you know.”

“Oh, of course,” said Angelo, wisely, and Sherlock looked at John, knowing he still looked starry-eyed and probably also on top of it humiliatingly relieved to be spared the panic attack of the sight of John sitting openly exposed in a window seat. 

John’s expression was the carefully neutral expression that he used when he was pretending to be stupid when he was anything but, and he followed Angelo to a table in the back without a word. Sherlock followed behind them, studied all of the other diners, catalogued all the embarrassing details about their lives, and concluded that it was unlikely any of them were undercover assassins. 

Angelo said, “I’ll bring a candle for the table. More romantic,” as he usually did.

Except that this time John looked him fully in the eye and said firmly, “Thank you.”

Sherlock, caught slightly off-guard by this, paused in the process of sitting down to blink at John. Angelo looked between them and then smiled a self-satisfied smile. 

“Ah,” he said. “I told you. Didn’t I tell you?” It was John’s turn to have Angelo’s finger waggled in front of his face. “You are a bit slow, Dr. Watson.”

“But I get it right in the end,” said John, blandly, opening his menu. 

Angelo winked at Sherlock like they were in some vast conspiracy together and then scurried off to fetch the candle. 

Sherlock looked across at John, studying his menu as if they hadn’t eaten there dozens of times before and as if John didn’t always order the same thing every time, and loved him so much that the _thank you_ got thoroughly caught in his throat. 

“You’re getting something,” said John, scrutinizing the menu, foolishly oblivious to the fact that Sherlock was being soppy across the table at him. “Bread, tiramisu, tea, I don’t care what it is, but you’ve been dreadful about eating the past few days.” John glanced up at him and froze, locking gazes with him, until Angelo slid the candle onto the table with a quick “Don’t mind me.” 

That seemed to break the spell. John looked away, clearing his throat with an edge of embarrassment and rubbing at his forehead. “Did you always look at me that way?” he asked. 

“Given the percentage of people who thought we were in a relationship, I think it’s fair to say that yes, I did,” Sherlock replied, gravely. 

“How did I never notice?”

“You’re an idiot,” said Sherlock. 

***

Three days after that, Lestrade rang them with a case. Sherlock had been just about at the end of his rope, and John had texted Lestrade begging for something and promising to buy him a pint in everlasting gratitude, and then there was a murder scene and it was just like always. Sally and Anderson were both awkward, but Sherlock paid them absolutely no heed. He stood at the crime scene and breathed it in the way an old sailor might breathe in the scent of the ocean (later, when John used that simile in the blog entry about the case, Sherlock criticized him until John kissed him to shut him up). And then Sherlock launched into a whirlwind of energetic investigating and by the time the killer was caught, after a madcap stakeout that turned into an undercover sting operation, John was positively gleeful. 

They fell into Baker Street, snogging and groping, and stumbled up the stairs locked together, and Mrs. Hudson was wise enough not to check on them. 

John pushed Sherlock onto the bed and pulled his jumper over his head and said, “I actually feel _safer_ when we’re out chasing criminals. You realize there’s something very wrong with us.”

“Shut up,” said Sherlock, and pulled him onto the bed with him. 

It went on like that for a little while, and it seemed to John that it all felt perfectly normal, for the given value of normal that was his crazy life. They solved crimes together and squabbled over the experiments in the kitchen and snuggled on the sofa and shagged whenever they felt like it and slept curled into each other, and John sometimes almost forgot that there was always a sniper, somewhere, watching for their safety. Except that then Mycroft would show up with a dossier and detail the latest high-paid assassin to have entered London, and Sherlock would sit plucking at his violin and looking dark and unhappy, and John was reminded that their entire existence could be so easily and quickly rattled, thrown upside down and out the window. 

There was a day, weeks later, watching Sherlock at a crime scene, when Lestrade said to John, “You’ll have to let him out of your sight sooner or later.”

And John blinked and realized that, astonishingly, Lestrade was absolutely right. Since they had been back in London, he and Sherlock had not been separated by anything more lengthy than a shower (save for John’s chat with Mrs. Hudson breaking the news of his return). And John hadn’t even _noticed_ it. But he had quit his job at the clinic and had devoted himself to simply lounging around the flat or following where Sherlock was going. He hadn’t even gone to visit his sister, resisting her texted invitations. He had simply been wherever Sherlock was. 

“It’s mutual,” Lestrade continued. “Even now, if I raised a hand to you he’d be over here before I could blink. He always knows where you are, and you’re never very far away from him. And it’s your business, I get that, but sooner or later you’ll have to trust him enough to let him out of your sight.”

John looked at Sherlock and acknowledged the sickening truth of the codependency they had developed, of the trauma in their separation that just might linger for the rest of their lives. “It isn’t him I don’t trust,” said John, watching Sherlock stand, and Sherlock stood in a way that seemed to John suddenly _off_. John cocked his head, studying him. 

Sherlock took one step back, and then another, but they were unsteady, uncertain steps, as if he didn’t know what direction he was going in. 

It was possible Lestrade was still talking to John, but John wasn’t paying attention because Sherlock turned abruptly, half-staggering past them. 

Sally gave him a look of surprise as he went, and Sherlock mumbled something unintelligible, and John said, “Excuse me,” and followed. Sherlock’s pace had picked up until he was practically running. They were in a warehouse, and John followed him down the long, dark, cold hallway, where it ended in a large, half-broken window. Sherlock stopped when he got to it, leaning far outside, and John’s heart pounded in his chest and he increased his pace. Sherlock wasn’t going to jump, of course Sherlock wasn’t going to jump, John reminded himself, but he didn’t like to see Sherlock leaning out over heights. 

When he got close he realized that Sherlock was hyperventilating, taking rapid gasps of damp, bracing air. 

“Sherlock,” John said, in surprise, because it had been a while since Sherlock had had a panic attack. Since Anguilla, really.

Sherlock did not duck back through the window. He flapped an arm at John, a _go-away_ gesture. 

As if that was bloody likely to ever happen, thought John. “Sherlock,” John snapped, trying to be harsh enough to get through to him, and pulled him by his coat back into the warehouse. Sherlock turned, sliding to the floor with his back against the wall, and pressed his face against his knees, dry-sobbing for breath in an uncontrollable way that made John feel an answering panic rise up inside of him. _Not helpful_ , he told his fight-or-flight response, and slid to his knees next to Sherlock, pulling his head up to make him look at him. “ _Breathe_ ,” he commanded. “A nice, deep breath. Come on. Remember?”

Sherlock managed it after a second, and then managed another, and another, and John felt his own lungs start to fill more steadily, his own heart start to slow. Sherlock reached for him, clumsily, pulling him against him and burying his face against John’s neck. His skin was clammy and his hair was damp with sweat and John said, “Shhhhhhh,” in a long, soothing rush of breath and pressed kisses against his head and wondered what the hell had brought that on. 

“It had nothing to do with him,” Sherlock mumbled. 

“What?”

“The victim. It had nothing to do with him. Not really.” 

“Is this about the case? Don’t worry about the case right now.”

“She loved him. The killer’s wife, she was in love with the victim, so he killed him. He killed him because it would hurt her. That’s all. He wanted to hurt her, so he took the thing that was most precious to her and ended it.” Sherlock’s breath careened off into a hiccup of desperation. 

“Breathe, Sherlock,” John reminded him, and then, “It’s not me. I’m right here. It isn’t me.”

Sherlock let go of him, tipping his head back against the wall and closing his eyes. He looked completely exhausted, and all of John’s protective instincts screamed at him to get Sherlock home and into bed, cozy and wrapped in safety. 

“I thought I was better,” Sherlock said. 

“You are.”

“I thought I was _well_.”

“You’re getting there.”

Sherlock spoke as if John hadn’t said anything at all. “And then I was standing over that body and realized why he was killed, and I thought I was going to be sick, right there in front of Anderson and Donovan.”

“Let’s go home,” said John, and reached for his hand. 

Sherlock lifted his head, his eyes snapping open. “No.”

“Sherlock—”

“There’s a case, John.”

“I don’t think we should do this case.”

“Why?” demanded Sherlock, scathingly. “Because I’m too _fragile_ for it?”

“Sherlock,” said John. 

Sherlock stood, tugging his clothes back into place, running a hand through his hair. “I’m going to get his killer,” Sherlock announced. “It’s the least I can do.”

***

The case was not pleasant. 

Sherlock recited his deductions about the killer at rapid-fire speed, and for once that speed was not about showing off. Even Sally and Anderson seemed to sense that something had rattled Sherlock enough that he was barely holding it together, but they just gaped at him in astonishment, as if it had never occurred to either of them that Sherlock might have _feelings_ like a normal human being, and John told himself not to knock their heads together in annoyance. Lestrade studiously avoided looking at Sherlock, which told John that he had witnessed at least part of Sherlock’s breakdown. It probably told Sherlock that, too, but Sherlock was operating so quickly that John had the impression he was barely letting himself do more than skim the surface of his thoughts. 

Sherlock insisted that they had to go to the murderer’s house so that Sherlock could pick up clues about where he might be hiding. John sat next to Sherlock in the cab and said nothing to him, because he was torn between wanting to cuddle him in comfort and wanting to snap at him that they should be going home. 

The killer’s wife—the victim’s lover—was at the house when they got there. Sherlock pushed past her and headed upstairs to the bedroom, but they weren’t nearly far enough away not to hear her wail of distress upon hearing the news of the victim’s death. Sherlock paused in opening a dresser drawer, closed his eyes for a second, and then launched himself into his task with even grimmer efficiency. 

In the end it wasn’t an especially challenging case. Sherlock, uncharacteristically, dully told Lestrade where the killer was, engaging in none of his usual fanfare, and then turned down Lestrade’s invitation to be at the actual apprehension. 

Lestrade didn’t press it. He glanced at John, and John made sure to keep his expression neutral. 

Sherlock flagged down a cab, and they piled into it together, and John looked out his window and let silence stretch. 

“You’re angry,” Sherlock remarked, after a few minutes. 

“You didn’t need to put yourself through that,” John responded, flatly. 

“It was a _case_ , John.”

“It was more than a case, and we both know it. Don’t treat me like an idiot. I hate when you do that.”

Sherlock didn’t respond, and John didn’t need to turn around to be able to tell he had settled into a sulk. John didn’t want him to sulk, and he wanted to apologize for speaking so sharply to him, but if he spoke more gently he might go to pieces in the back of the cab, and he couldn’t do that, he had to hold it together. 

They walked up the steps to 221B silently, and John closed the door behind him, and then he said, “That was unnecessary. That was all unnecessary. The whole thing. Do you know how it is to force me to watch you unravel like that?”

Sherlock had disappeared into the kitchen. “Oh, yes. Poor John Watson. How distressing it is for _you_ to watch _me_ have a nervous breakdown.”

John was about to acknowledge that yes, that had been a selfish way for him to frame things, except that when he walked into the kitchen, it was just in time to see Sherlock fling a mug against the opposite wall, shattering it. 

John jumped, startled, staring at the shards of ceramic on the lino. 

“I am done,” Sherlock announced, his voice lethally sharp, fatally quiet. “That’s it.”

John looked at him, standing so calmly in the middle of their kitchen, his hands in the pockets of his coat. He would have looked utterly normal to anyone else, but John could see the hard, unyielding ice in his eyes. 

“With what?” he asked. In contrast to all of Sherlock’s self-possession, John’s voice was strangled. 

“I am done waiting.” Sherlock walked over to him slowly, steadily, eyes on him. “Would you say that we are better together than we are apart?”

John cocked his head. “Yes…”

“Then get your gun. We are doing together what I couldn’t do alone: We are finishing Moriarty’s network.”

***

John got his gun and came back from retrieving it to find Sherlock halfway down the stairs already. “Where are you going?” he asked, hurrying after him, tucking his gun into the back of his trousers as he went. 

Sherlock didn’t answer. Sherlock walked out of 221 and marched across the street without looking right or left, and John was just grateful he wasn’t run over by a car. Sherlock walked up to the door of 220, and then turned and reached behind John’s back, pulling the gun out of his trousers. 

“What are you—” John started, and then Sherlock shot the lock clean off the door. John jumped in surprise. People on the street jumped in surprise, turning and looking at them. “Sherlock,” John hissed, reaching for the gun. “What the _hell_ —”

Sherlock pushed his way through the door and into the building before John could grab the gun from him, walking up the stairs with steady swiftness. 

John, wide-eyed and feeling naked without his gun, swore viciously and went after him because he didn’t know what else to do. Sherlock had lost his bloody _mind_. 

“Sherlock, give me the—”

Sherlock reached the top of the stairs, aimed the gun again, and took out another lock. 

“Jesus Christ,” John said, and lunged for him, just as Sherlock simultaneously kicked the door open and then turned to John, knocking him out of the way, down to the floor to the right of the door, landing heavily on top of him. 

There was a burst of concentrated gunshots from inside the flat. Sherlock clambered off of John, pressing himself against the wall next to the doorway. A man edged through it, catching sight of John and immediately aiming a gun at him. Which was when Sherlock swung the barrel of his gun up against the man’s head. The man saw it coming a second too late to do anything about it, staggered to the side with the blow, giving Sherlock the opportunity to pull the gun out of his hand and press him back against the wall of the hallway, forearm hard against his throat. 

John had got to his feet by now and was warily watching, wondering what to do. Sherlock tossed the confiscated gun to him and, in the same motion, turned to glance at the door of the opposite flat, which had cracked open. 

“Get back inside and forget you saw anything,” he commanded, his voice a snarl that John barely recognized, and the door immediately slammed shut. 

Sherlock, apparently satisfied, eased up on the man he had against the wall, who gagged and coughed for breath, as Sherlock unceremoniously swung him back into the flat from whence he’d come. 

“Sherlock, now is probably the time to tell me what you’re doing,” John demanded, trying to keep a check on his temper in front of the man who Sherlock had just pushed into a kitchen chair. 

“Exactly what I said we were doing,” Sherlock answered, without taking his eyes off of the man in the chair. He lifted his arm in a fluid motion and pressed the barrel of John’s gun to the man’s forehead. “Tell me where,” said Sherlock. 

The man’s lips pressed tightly together, and his eyes glared at Sherlock from either side of the barrel of the gun. 

Sherlock eased the safety off with a loud click. “Where is Moran?”

John looked from Sherlock to the stubbornly silent man, trying to determine if Sherlock was really going to pull the trigger. Sherlock was clearly fraught with emotion at the moment. John wasn’t sure that trying to reason with him wouldn’t just make things worse. 

“This is a suicide mission he’s sent you on,” Sherlock snapped. “Surely you see that. There are government snipers trained on this building, they’d’ve taken you out as soon as you went in range, and you would have had to go in range to get at me. He sent you here to die, you understand that. So tell me where he is and he dies instead of you. It’s as simple as that.”

The man started laughing at that, a harsh, rusty sound that made John wince. “You think I know where he is?” he asked. 

“John,” said Sherlock, his voice abruptly calm and almost pleasant, and he could have been back in the sitting room of 221B, about to ask John to make him a cup of tea. “There is a mobile in this man’s left trouser pocket. Would you be so kind as to fetch it for me?”

John decided it was probably better to just do it than to quarrel about it, so he walked over and crouched down and wriggled his hand into the man’s pocket. The man didn’t help very much. Sherlock dug the barrel of the gun harder into his forehead and said, silkily, in a tone of voice that sent a shudder down John’s spine, “Careful how you squirm, the safety’s still off.” 

“Got it,” John said, wrapping his hand around the phone and pulling it out. 

“What’s the last number he rang?” Sherlock asked him. 

John scrolled through. “He didn’t. There are no calls in the history. At all.”

“And that’s true, isn’t it?” Sherlock said to his hostage. “It’s not that the phone has been wiped, it’s that the phone is brand new. John, give him his phone.”

John did so. 

“Get him on the phone,” Sherlock commanded, his tone icy again. 

The man hesitated. 

“You may be thinking,” remarked Sherlock, conversationally, “that I’ll kill you if you don’t do this. But I won’t.” Sherlock shifted the gun ever so slightly, off the center of the forehead, over to the side. “Do you know that not all gunshot wounds to the heads are fatal? Especially not clean-through shots that only affect one hemisphere of the brain. I’m an expert in anatomy, you know. Very good at placing a bullet exactly where it needs to be to keep you alive for what one could anticipate would be a very unpleasant length of time.” Sherlock’s voice turned hard. “Now get him on the phone.”

The man started dialing. John stood in the kitchen of this strange flat, holding someone else’s gun, watching his boyfriend stand with a gun to someone’s temple, delivering threats in a voice that made John, frankly, terrified. Not long before, this man had clung to him desperately and John had soothed him out of a panic. Not long before that, he had murmured impossibly tender things in John’s ear in the dark, cozy intimacy of their bedroom. And now John was not entirely sure he wasn’t going to blow this man’s brains out. 

The man finished dialing. Sherlock reached out and grabbed the mobile from him, holding it up to his ear. After a moment, Sherlock said, “I’ve grown tired of your calling cards. Either come in person or stop with this. It’s tedious and dull and Moriarty would have hated it.” Sherlock ended the call, tossed the mobile to the floor, and stepped on it viciously, his heel smashing it. And then he said, lightly, “John, ring Mycroft, would you?”


	13. Chapter 13

Chapter Thirteen

“What are you up to?” Mycroft demanded, which was exactly what John wanted to know, but John stayed silent and filled the kettle and listened to the argument going on in the sitting room. 

“Nothing,” Sherlock replied, and to anyone else his tone would have been casual and disinterested, but John knew him, and John could hear the dangerous, flat, determined recklessness underneath everything. Sherlock was definitely up to something. Something John doubtlessly wasn’t going to like. 

“Then why is it you provoked several emergency calls complaining of gunshots in order to apprehend an assassin who you knew your snipers would have protected you from?”

There was a moment of silence. “Bored,” offered Sherlock, finally, lightly. 

John pulled so energetically at the teabag that he tore it open, sending tea leaves spilling over the counter and into the mugs. “Bugger,” he muttered, sweeping them up into his hand and wishing Mycroft would leave so he could have it out with Sherlock. 

“Whatever you’re planning,” came Mycroft’s voice, “stop it. Now. I know you don’t care about yourself but it’s dangerous to John, and I thought that meant something to you.”

John wasn’t about to be used to manipulate Sherlock into anything. He’d been used once before that way, without his knowledge, and he didn’t much like how that had turned out. 

“I can take care of myself,” he called into the sitting room as the kettle clicked at him. 

“The two of you reinforce each other’s self-delusions,” announced Mycroft, disapprovingly. 

John thought it was possible that was true. John thought it was possible he and Sherlock didn’t have the healthiest relationship. John knew, however, that he had never been as incredibly happy as he was when he was with Sherlock, so he didn’t much care what his therapist would have said. His life was worth living again, and he wasn’t going to do anything to jeopardize it. 

John poured the tea, violin music started from the sitting room, and Mycroft walked into the kitchen. 

“John,” he said. “This is foolhardy and—”

“Coming back to London was foolhardy. My going after him at all was foolhardy. Jumping off a bloody roof was foolhardy. It’s a bit late to turn off this road, Mycroft, we’ve been driving it for a very long time. Are you staying for tea?”

“I didn’t know I was invited for tea.”

“You’re not.”

Mycroft actually chuckled, then said, “There’s foolhardy and there’s suicidal. There’s a difference. He died for you once before, and I don’t think you liked it very much. So it would behoove you not to let it happen again, wouldn’t it?”

John looked at Mycroft, whose gray eyes were somber and dead serious. And he nodded because he knew exactly what Mycroft was talking about, and his stomach was sick with the fear of this. Sherlock was tuned to a pitch that John didn’t like, a pitch of desperation that would have had them worrying about drugs in earlier, simpler times. _He loves you so much he’ll do anything for you_ , thought John, _and that’s what’s so terrifying about him._

Mycroft left, and John listened to his treads down the staircase. Sherlock’s violin shifted from violent Wagner into swaying Tchaikovsky. John had spent a lot of time listening to classical music during Sherlock’s death. He had been able to classify Sherlock’s favorite pieces, and to link them up with his mood. Tchaikovsky was John music. Sherlock used it when he was feeling seductive sometimes, but he had always used it for John’s benefit before, when John had had a bad day or was in a bad mood. He used it manipulatively, too, of course, because there was nothing off-limits to manipulation as far as Sherlock was concerned, and he was using it manipulatively now. Croon a bit of John’s favorite at him and maybe this would all be forgotten. 

“Stop it,” John said, mildly, walking into the sitting room and setting Sherlock’s tea on the desk. Sherlock was perched on the back of his chair, bare feet on its seat, playing with his eyes closed. It was achingly gorgeous. Sherlock was pulling out all the stops. “Sherlock,” said John, sharply. “I’m serious.”

Sherlock stopped mid-phrase, lowering the violin and glaring at John. “People pay hundreds of quid to hear Tchaikovsky played like that, you know.”

John leaned against the desk and crossed his arms, making sure Sherlock knew he was unamused. “What the hell are you up to?” Sherlock opened his mouth, but John cut in before he could say anything. “If you say ‘nothing,’ I’ll throw that violin out the window. I am not your brother, and I will not let you shut me out of this. I didn’t go through hell to get you back just to end up in the same place with you, do you understand me?”

Sherlock closed his mouth and regarded him, then put the violin down and slid onto the chair, keeping his knees pressed into his chest. He looked young when he sat that way, but John was fairly sure he didn’t know that. Sherlock was an expert at manipulation, but he didn’t like to use vulnerability to manipulate unless it was very tightly controlled, and John could see through that. John let silence stretch between them, vast and uncomfortable, until Sherlock finally spoke. 

“I can’t do this anymore,” he said, looking at the wall behind John instead of at John himself. His voice was uncertain and grudging. 

“Yeah, I kind of got that when you threw a mug at the wall. And it was made even clearer when you held a gun to someone’s head. You’re at the end of your rope, that’s obvious. So let’s talk about it. That’s what I’m here for, you know. You should be talking to me _before_ you steal my gun off me and start shooting on heavily populated streets.”

Sherlock looked at him, and he looked honestly astonished, bewildered. “How are you _doing_ this?”

John hadn’t expected the amazement. “Doing what?”

“Living this life with me, day after day. You never flinch, you never… I feel like I can’t breathe, and I look at you, and you _smile_ at me, like you’re _happy_.”

John didn’t know what to make of this. “I _am_ happy. You’re not?” This had never occurred to him. Being with Sherlock made him euphoric; he had blindly assumed that the reverse was true. But maybe it wasn’t. Maybe that had been foolish of him. How could any one person be enough for Sherlock Holmes? 

“I am,” said Sherlock, sounding the very opposite of happy. “And that’s what’s so miserable. You make me happy. This whole thing is a dream. Any minute now I’m going to wake up, because Moran will finally succeed and you’ll be killed.”

“Who is Moran? You’ve never mentioned his name before.”

“Moriarty’s second-in-command. He’s who I was chasing the whole time. He was the one calling the shots.”

“And keeping up this ridiculous vendetta.”

“Yes. He’s as insane as Moriarty was. Well, they all seem to be insane. But he is the insane one in charge now.”

“Without him, would it all fall to pieces?”

“I was operating on that assumption, yes. There doesn’t seem to be anybody else in the chain of command. The operation sprawls at that point into spider webs, and I think the spider webs would care less about me, less about us. Moran has a hero-worship of Moriarty, it’s why he’s so obsessed with me.”

“Why didn’t you tell me all this earlier?” John asked. One person to get—just one person—it seemed so much more doable than the shadowy threat he’d been living with. 

Sherlock didn’t look at him. Sherlock looked back at the wall. “You’re…” He faltered and licked his lips and tried again. “You’re protective of me. You’d already stated a desire to hurt the people who’d hurt me. As it was, you couldn’t give that desire a target, so there was no risk that you’d go off and try and do it. But if you knew that it was really just one person behind it all again…”

“You thought I’d go after him.”

Sherlock’s eyes shifted, met John’s. “Don’t tell me you hadn’t made up your mind to go after the first concrete target I could give you. Don’t even try to pretend that you don’t look at me sometimes and think of everything you’re going to do to avenge every unhappy moment I’ve ever had. Because I know that you do. Because I suffer the same impulse. It’s why I left in the first place. If I made sure you didn’t know where you could go to fix me then it would keep you here with me, and that was vitally important to me. So no, I didn’t tell you.”

John took a second to silently acknowledge the truth of what Sherlock was saying. It made sense that Sherlock would have kept this information from him, because Sherlock could be right: John _might_ have gone after Moran if he had known that he just needed to get at one person to get Sherlock safe. John thought of Sherlock hyperventilating with panic in his arms and decided Sherlock was absolutely right: If he had known that there was a single person out there who could be blamed for Sherlock’s state, then John would have locked Sherlock in a room somewhere and gone off immediately to get that person. 

“Okay,” he said, and his voice was gentler than it had been. Sherlock didn’t shift his stance, but he did relax fractionally, grasping that he was no longer under attack. “So tell me about Moran.”

“He’s not as clever as Moriarty. Seems to have been a bit of an aimless psychopath, no sociopath about it.”

“There’s nothing sociopathic about you,” John interjected, calmly. “That’s a role you’ve just decided it would be convenient for you to play.”

Sherlock ignored him. “Moriarty gave him purpose and direction, and Moran developed an unhealthy obsession with him, which he has now transferred to me. But he’s not as clever, and I’m sure I could beat him in a fair fight, it’s just that he’s so well-hidden. Moriarty was good at making sure people couldn’t get to him, and Moran’s copied his methods.”

“So you want to draw him out.”

“I’ve always wanted to, I’ve just never been able to. I’m hoping that insulting what he was doing in Moriarty’s name will do the trick.”

John looked at him for a long moment. It didn’t seem especially reckless to him. Certainly it seemed no more dangerous than continuing to live their lives with a revolving cast of assassins in the building next door. “You should have told me this before you took off like a lunatic,” John told him. 

Sherlock did look guilty. “Yes,” he admitted. “I probably should have. I’m not used to not working alone. Not in this circumstance.”

“But you said it yourself: We’re stronger together than we are separated. We will take down Moran together.”

“Yes,” agreed Sherlock. 

“Sherlock.” John said his name sharply, warningly. “I’m serious. I will not hesitate to tie you up somewhere and throw away the key and do all of this by myself if I think you are keeping something from me.”

Sherlock hesitated, then nodded. 

“Good,” said John, believing him, and relaxed a bit. 

Sherlock looked across at him uncertainly, and John walked over to him and reached out, threading his hands into the thick curls on the back of Sherlock’s head. Sherlock shifted, and John applied some pressure with his fingers, and Sherlock accepted the invitation, lifting his arms up around John to pull him closer, pressing his face into John’s chest. 

“You silly man,” John said, resting his lips into the crown of Sherlock’s head. “I love you.”

“I will _die_ if anything happens to you,” said Sherlock, his voice muffled against John. 

“Nothing will,” John promised. “I swear to you, nothing will. And do not imagine for a second that the feeling isn’t mutual. I cannot lose you again. Not now, not after everything.”

Sherlock took a deep, shuddering breath and was quiet for a long time. When he spoke again, he sounded much more calm and collected, much more like himself. “Was the tying up thing meant to be a threat?” was what he said, mildly. 

And John laughed and loved him so much that he couldn’t imagine that anything would ever happen to either one of them. Because how could they have found each other—and be so perfect for each other—not to live happily ever after? 

***

The text came from an unknown number and read _Victoria Tower Gardens. 5 pm. Come and play._

John looked at it over Sherlock’s shoulder and said, “We’ll have Mycroft get a sniper into place.”

Sherlock shook his head. “That won’t work.”

“Why not?”

“Because if there’s a sniper there he just won’t show.”

“We can’t hide a sniper from him?” John asked. “I thought we were meant to be cleverer than him.”

“We can’t involve Mycroft. I don’t trust his team; I don’t trust Moran not to have infiltrated them. If I contact Mycroft and ask for a sniper, I’m convinced Moran will know and he won’t show and that isn’t what I want.”

“Fine. Then I’ll be your sniper.”

Sherlock sighed. “John…”

“I’m a good shot. I’ll go to Victoria Tower Gardens with you, and I’ll put a bullet though his skull. The end.”

“You think Moran will show if you’re with me?” Sherlock asked, patiently. 

“What was the point of luring him out if you’re not going to kill him now?” demanded John. 

Sherlock looked across from him, impatient and thrumming with energy. John would have been terrible on the run with him, Sherlock thought. John was entirely a man of action. John, given an end goal, went for it with fierce single-mindedness, undeterred by anything else. “If you shoot him in Victoria Tower Gardens, do you really think you’ll get out of Victoria Tower Gardens alive?”

“I’ll—”

“You see the shortcomings of your plan, then,” interrupted Sherlock, blandly. 

John frowned. “What is your plan, then?”

“I’m going to go meet Moran. You’re going to stay here in Baker Street, protected.”

“And allow Moran to kill you?”

“Moran’s not going to kill me.”

“Why not? What makes you so sure? He’s been trying awfully hard for a long time now to do just that.”

“He’s not going to kill me in Victoria Tower Gardens, having sent a text to me to get me there that he knows I’ll have shared with you at a minimum, and if anything were to happen to me in Victoria Tower Gardens you’d doubtless bring the entire British government down on his head in retribution. If he kills me he wants to do it in a far less obvious and traceable way. That’s why he hasn’t killed me so far.”

John was silent for a moment, displeasure written all over his face. He inhaled and exhaled slowly. “So what are you going to do in Victoria Tower Gardens?”

“I am going to meet Moran, and I am going to deduce more about him than he could ever imagine, and then we are going to use that to bring him down.”

***

Sherlock’s plan was a good one, in his opinion. Sherlock did not always think his plans were good ones. He was actually brutally honest with himself when it mattered; he just never let other people see that. And Sherlock thought his plan was the best he could have had. Except that he got in a cab outside Baker Street and said, “Victoria Tower Gardens” and what happened was that the cab took him in entirely the wrong direction. 

“I said Victoria Tower Gardens,” he repeated, sitting up a little straighter. 

“You have a terrible habit of getting into dangerous cabs,” said the cabbie, blandly. 

Sherlock’s mind tumbled over itself, trying to make allowances for this unforeseen event. He said, pleased when he sounded calm and unperturbed, “You said Victoria Tower Gardens.”

“Well, we both know that neither one of us always means what we say.”

Sherlock surreptitiously reached for the mobile in his coat pocket. Not John, he thought. If he texted John, John would panic. But if he texted _Mycroft_ —

“Text anyone at all and I’m afraid Dr. Watson won’t live to see the next hour. Your brother’s snipers can’t take out everyone at once, you know.” Moran’s voice was even, disinterested. 

Sherlock stopped reaching for his mobile. He thought. He said, finally, “You’re just going to kill him anyway. Because I took the thing you loved from you—or so you think—so you’re going to take the thing I love from me.”

Moran’s eyes, stony and displeased, flickered at Sherlock through the medium of the rear-view mirror. “I didn’t _love_ him.”

Sherlock lifted dubious eyebrows and looked out the window, considering his options. If he made a run for it, Moran would put into operation whatever plan he had to kill John. If he kept him talking then there was an opportunity for Mycroft’s snipers to pick up on the profusion of assassins gathering around Baker Street, for Mycroft to put a counterplan into operation. 

The mobile in his pocket vibrated against him. Someone texting.

“Someone wants to get in touch with you,” remarked Moran. 

“I’m extremely popular,” replied Sherlock. 

“I’ve noticed.” Moran lifted a hand. “Give it to me.”

Sherlock hesitated, then pulled his mobile out and glanced at it. John. 

“Now, Mr. Holmes,” said Moran. 

Sherlock put the mobile into Moran’s waiting hand. 

Moran glanced at it as he drove. “Text me that you’re okay, I trust nothing about this,” he read. “My, he’s a suspicious little bodyguard, your Doctor Watson, isn’t he?”

“It’s his job,” remarked Sherlock, “as you’re well aware. Keeping me safe. He hasn’t yet failed at it.”

“You jumped off a building.”

“I came back.”

Moran frowned thunderously and began texting on Sherlock’s mobile, saying the words out loud as he typed them. “Everything…fine…see…you…soon,” he texted, and then Sherlock watched him hit _send_. 

_He didn’t sign it_ , thought Sherlock. He thought of the missing _SH_ at the end of the text. He thought of John receiving a text from him that didn’t have _SH_ at the end of it. John would know, immediately, that things were not fine. _Ring Mycroft_ , thought Sherlock, desperately, wishing he could just think thoughts at John and that John would understand them. Why couldn’t John read his mind? This was all tremendously inconvenient. _Don’t come after me yourself, ring Mycroft._

He wouldn’t, thought Sherlock. Well, he might ring Mycroft as he was barreling out of the flat to save Sherlock. Bloody hell, Sherlock was sitting in this car, and over in Baker Street John could already be dead. 

“I’m going to kill you,” Sherlock decided, and it was amazing how clear everything now seemed to him. 

“That would be quite a feat,” remarked Moran, sounding amused, as he tossed Sherlock’s mobile into the passenger seat. “Considering that you’re going to be quite dead in just a few minutes.”

“Right,” agreed Sherlock. “But I’m going to kill you _now_.” And then he stuck his arm through the cabbie’s window and jerked the steering wheel hard to the right. 

The car squealed out of control. Moran swore and tried to jerk it back onto the road. Something collided with them, throwing Sherlock hard to the left, where he hit his head against the window and blinked dizziness away from him. Something else collided with them from the other side, throwing Sherlock across the backseat. He scrambled to stop himself but slammed equally hard against the other side of the car. Stars went off inside his head. His nerve center was trilling at him in alarm, trying to process all the different areas of his body that were broadcasting pain, and then the car flipped entirely over.


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this is it, guys. We've reached the end, finally, of the Letters saga, which started as what I thought would be a quick little experiment in epistolary writing while I was in a flight delay at an airport. Oops!
> 
> Several people have asked me if I've edited this at all in response to S3. Answer: Nope. The first draft of this was finished in April, and it's substantially the same, save for Britpick and beta edits. 
> 
> If you're watching Sherlock on the U.S. schedule, tonight you're getting to watch MY FAVORITE EPISODE OF THIS SHOW EVER. But, even if you disagree and think the show jumps the shark with this episode, the trend seems to be that you will really, really like the next episode. So look at it this way: Most of you will soon be seeing your favorite Sherlock episode of all time. It's just that you may really dislike the other one you've got to deal with...
> 
> Either way, next week in this space will be a brand-new, mid-length fic in which I attempt to "fix" S3. I hope you'll come along for the ride, because I'm a little bit in love with the fic's premise.

Chapter Fourteen

John had hated the plan as soon as Sherlock had proposed the plan, and there was no way he was going to let Sherlock make him sit in Baker Street, practically wrapped in cotton wool, while Sherlock was out there getting himself killed. 

John ran out of the flat with his mobile to his ear, and Mycroft picked up on the second ring. 

“Follow that cab,” John gasped to the cab that pulled up for him, and then to Mycroft, “I have no idea what I even expect you to do but Sherlock’s in trouble.”

“I’ve got his cab on CCTV.”

“Pull it over. Do something.”

“You’re sure he’s in trouble?”

“Yes,” John snapped. “I’m sure. He’s going to meet Moran and he’s keeping his cards too close to his vest and he’s going to do something stupid.” He ended the call and texted Sherlock just to remind him that he was _supposed to be keeping in touch_. And the reply he got back was…unsigned. Sherlock had never once, in all their acquaintance, no matter how well they knew each other, sent him an unsigned text. Never.

John’s mobile rang in his hand. “Mycroft,” he said, answering it.

“John—” Mycroft began, his voice sounding tense. 

And then John’s cabbie slammed on his brakes with such force that John had to put out a hand to keep from colliding with the plastic screen between them. From up in front of them came the sickening sound of squealing brakes followed by a crash, then another, and another, and another. And John knew immediately. He dropped his phone in horror, thinking, _Oh my God, Sherlock, what have you done?_

His driver said, “Hey, that taxi you told me to follow just—”

John staggered out of the car and ran through the pile of stopped vehicles between him and the scene of the accident. People had begun getting out of the cars, and he had to dodge around them. A little circle had opened up around the accident itself. There were several smashed-up cars and then the cab—Sherlock’s cab—crumpled and resting upside-down, half of it wedged against a bank. The backseat, where Sherlock had surely been, had collapsed into itself like an accordion. 

Someone had reached out and stopped John from rushing directly up to the accident. “Not sure you want to see that, mate,” said the man who had stopped him. 

“I’m a doctor,” John said, automatically. “Let me through, I’m a doctor.”

Those were always magic words, and John found himself with a clear path to run up to the cab. A few people were peering through it. 

“The driver’s still alive,” said one of them to John as he ran up, “but he’s wedged in there.”

John ducked down to look through the passenger side window. The driver, blood pouring down his face, looked over at him from where he was trapped, upside-down, between the steering wheel and the wall of the bank. And, amazingly, on the roof of the car between John and the driver was Sherlock’s mobile. John would have recognized Sherlock’s mobile anywhere. John lifted his eyes back to the driver, who looked back at him, and there was something in his gaze, some form of recognition. John suddenly wanted to take his gun out and shoot Moran right between his eyes. He said instead, sweeping his eyes over him, his voice sharp and clean, “Forget about the driver, his internal injuries are too severe. He’s not going to make it. What about the passenger?”

The standers-by all made general quizzical sounds at him, but John crawled to the back of the car. The back windows had all shattered, and the roof had crumpled but it had crumpled toward the front seats, which left a tiny hole of space. John could see Sherlock’s arm, enclosed in Sherlock’s wool coat. 

John lowered himself to his stomach and crawled farther into the car, which creaked and groaned above him and John hoped that it wasn’t about to collapse entirely. He stretched out and reached and managed to grab Sherlock’s arm, which fell unresponsively toward him when he tugged on it, and for a dizzy moment John thought he might actually be sick, right there in the car. He forced himself to breathe and reached for Sherlock’s wrist and felt for his pulse. _Please be there, please be there, please be there._ It was. For a moment John thought maybe the wishful thinking of his imagination had put it there, but no, there was a faint, thready pulse. 

“Sherlock,” said John, even though it was clear Sherlock must be unconscious, because maybe he would hear John, somehow, someway, and remember that he had something to live for and he really needed to fight. “Sherlock, I’m here and you’re going to be fine,” said John, crawling deeper into the car. He got a hand under Sherlock’s armpit and thought for a moment about the possibility of neck or spinal injuries. 

The car groaned around them, and John decided he didn’t have a choice, he had to get Sherlock out of there. He tugged, and Sherlock came into view, and he was covered in blood. John closed his eyes and gritted his teeth and tugged some more, as gently as he could. He made slow, excruciating progress, and it felt like it took him half an hour to get Sherlock out of the car, but it could only have been a minute or so. He was vaguely aware that people were helping, but he couldn’t pay attention to them. He laid Sherlock out on the pavement and took stock of his injuries immediately. The blood all over his head was worrisome, but it was the least of John’s immediate problems, that problem mainly being that Sherlock’s left leg had gotten trapped between the roof of the car and the backseat. It was badly broken, the bone protruding sickeningly from the skin, but far worse was the amount of blood that was gushing out of it. Sherlock was in danger of bleeding out. If John had been any later getting to the scene, if John had hesitated even a second in leaving Baker Street, Sherlock would have already been dead by the time John had managed to get there. 

John swore even as he pulled his belt off and shouted at people to _get out of his way_ and _let him work_. 

“I swear to God, Sherlock,” he said, as he twisted his belt into a tourniquet on Sherlock’s leg, “if you die on me right here, I will never forgive you, do you understand me? _Stop. Bleeding_.” He pulled the tourniquet as tight as he could get it, relieved when the flow of blood did seem to ease up. 

There were sirens, John registered dimly, and that was a good thing. Satisfied with the tourniquet, John moved back up Sherlock’s body, felt carefully through the blood-matted thickness of Sherlock’s hair. His hand came away covered with blood, but nothing worse. Outwardly, Sherlock’s skull was still intact, although John had no idea what hideous things might be going on in Sherlock’s brain. What he was mostly focused on was that Sherlock was breathing, shallowly but steadily, and John leaned his ear down and listened to Sherlock’s chest. His lungs seemed all right, which was a relief. 

John lifted his head back up and brushed blood off of Sherlock’s face. Some of it had dried and crusted on and it was a lost cause. 

“Okay,” John said, softly, just for Sherlock’s benefit. “You’re going to be just fine, do you hear me? That is my official diagnosis. You’re fine, and you’re coming back to me, and I won’t hear anything else about it.” John leaned down, brushed a very tender kiss over Sherlock’s unmoving lips. “I love you,” he reminded him. “Fight for me.”

“Excuse me, sir,” said a paramedic behind him, and then gently manhandled him away from Sherlock. 

John went, dully, numbly, because he couldn’t think what else to do and in his current state he was going to do Sherlock little good. He brushed a hand over his face, surprised when it came away wet, and looked at his hand, expecting to find it covered in blood. But it wasn’t. Tears, he realized. He was crying. When had that happened?

Someone led him away and was asking him questions— _Do you know the two men? Who are they? Can we ring their families?_ —and he thought he might be answering the questions, but he wasn’t sure. Someone draped a blanket over his shoulders, and John broke into hysterical laughter over being in shock and having a blanket, until Mycroft said, “Take the blanket off of him, can’t you see that’s making it worse?”

The familiarity of Mycroft’s voice seemed to cut through John’s haze. “Mycroft,” he said, and he didn’t even recognize his own voice, it was so choked with emotion. He had done this once before, been covered in Sherlock’s blood, and it had all been a trick, a magic trick. “Was it planned? Did you plan this?”

“Get in the car, John,” said Mycroft, not unkindly, and nudged him into the backseat of the waiting sedan. 

“If this was all some elaborate plan,” John continued, as Mycroft slid in after him, “I wish you two had let me in on it this time, because I really could have done without—” It wasn’t a plan, and he knew it wasn’t a plan, and he ended the sentence on a sob that he pushed down. He was a _doctor_ , damn it. He had knowledge about these things, and he could help Sherlock, surely he could. “What are they saying?” he asked, after a moment of gathering his composure. “What’s the prognosis?”

Mycroft didn’t say anything. 

John looked at him. “Mycroft,” he said, sharply, “tell me.”

“They don’t know. They’ve got to get him to hospital before they can do anything with the head injuries.”

John knew that objectively, but he wanted Mycroft to say that Sherlock was absolutely fine. 

“John, you’re bleeding,” Mycroft pointed out, and handed him a handkerchief.

“What?” John looked down and realized that he was bleeding. He’d torn through his jumper, and his forearm was covered in blood. “Must have been the car…” he realized, dazedly, pressing Mycroft’s handkerchief against it. 

“You’ll stop and get stitches for it whilst they’re checking Sherlock out,” Mycroft commanded. 

“It doesn’t need stitches,” said John. 

“Take another look at it.” Mycroft’s tone was mild. 

Mild enough that John, annoyed, pushed the tatters of his jumper out of the way so he could show Mycroft that it was nothing more than a scratch. Except that it was a deep, jagged cut and he definitely needed stitches. John stared at it because it didn’t hurt at all, not even a little bit, he wasn’t in any pain. 

“You’re in shock,” Mycroft told him, obviously reading his thoughts. 

John took a deep breath and put his arm down. He looked out the window. He said, “He isn’t going to die.”

“No,” Mycroft agreed. “He’s not.”

But Mycroft was humoring him, and Mycroft had never humored him ever before, and John had the sudden clear insight that, if he hadn’t been in shock, he would have been doubled over on the floor sobbing. 

***

Sherlock had a variety of more minor issues, the most serious of which was the broken leg, which they’d set. What the doctors were really concerned about was the internal bleeding that had built up on his brain. They’d relieved the pressure, and they insisted that Sherlock merely needed to heal himself now. There was nothing more they could do. John knew that objectively, but the idea that now all he could do was sit by Sherlock’s hospital bed and wait for him to come back to him was horrifying. 

But he did it because he had nothing else to do. He sat there and watched Sherlock take deep, even breaths, his chest rising and falling. He was the stillest John had ever seen, stiller than any sulk John had ever seen him in the grips of, and John wanted to shake him back into activity. 

Mycroft came in and leaned against the wall behind John, and John was grateful for his presence. Mycroft and Sherlock didn’t have an easy relationship, but Mycroft loved Sherlock and understood that John loved Sherlock, too, and John needed not to be judged for the turmoil he was in at the moment. 

“You saved his life,” Mycroft remarked, after a moment. “Another minute and he would have bled out, according to the doctor. He would have been dead by the time the emergency services got there.”

“I’d be more pleased with myself if he wasn’t in a coma right now,” John said, dully.

“He has to heal, John. Comas aren’t necessarily bad things, and you know that.”

“He’s never quiet.” John scrubbed a hand over his face. “Even when he’s being quiet, he’s the loudest quiet I’ve ever encountered. He isn’t _this_.”

Mycroft said nothing. John supposed he didn’t know what to say. 

“What happened to Moran?” John asked, eventually. 

There was a moment of silence. “I am not at liberty to say,” said Mycroft. 

John kept his eyes on Sherlock’s bruised and battered and unmoving face. “Tell me he’s dead,” he said, viciously. “I don’t want him imprisoned somewhere, I want him _dead_. If you haven’t killed him, I am going to find him, and I am going to do it myself, and do not even for a second think otherwise.”

“He’s dead,” said Mycroft. 

“Good,” said John, and leaned forward and took Sherlock’s hand, still and unmoving in his own. 

Mycroft said, “I’ll stop by again tomorrow. There’s nothing more we can do tonight. You should get some sleep.”

John did not reply, because there was no way he was going to get any sleep. He listened to Mycroft leave the room and lifted Sherlock’s hand to his face and breathed into his palm, “You have to keep fighting, Sherlock. Just a little more fighting. You’re almost there.”

***

Visitors cycled in and out. John paid little attention to them. Mrs. Hudson came in and fussed and cried. John tried to reassure her but found he had no energy for it. He was barely clinging to sanity himself, and he couldn’t take care of other people’s sanity at the moment. 

Harry arrived and sat with him silently, and John was so grateful for it that he actually took her hand and squeezed it. He wanted to say that he had no idea what he was going to do if Sherlock didn’t come out of it, but he couldn’t say that out loud yet. He had, once before, picked up the pieces of his life and started over. He couldn’t imagine doing it again.

He had been so furious when he had first realized that Sherlock had faked his death. Now he wished desperately for another hoax to be perpetrated on him, because he couldn’t handle the harshness of this reality he was in. 

Mycroft came and went, seldom speaking to John but frequently speaking on his mobile. John was sure they were probably state-secret-level conversations and he should have been flattered that Mycroft trusted him enough to have them in front of him, but John never paid attention to what Mycroft was even saying. The thought of it was simply too exhausting. 

Lestrade stopped by. He didn’t stay for very long, and he seemed awkward and unsure what to say. John appreciated the sentiment but couldn’t bring himself to make any sort of small talk. 

The doctors came by and conferred and said things to him, but John didn’t need these things to be said to him. John went through Sherlock’s chart and knew everything they were saying for himself already. The first twenty-four hours of a coma could be very helpful, healing. The second twenty-four hours, which they were swiftly approaching, were not a good sign at all. 

“Sherlock,” John whispered to him in the silent darkness of the hospital room after everyone had left and there were only machines to keep him company, after the second twenty-four hours had begun and hope was an ever more difficult thing for John to harbor in his ribcage. “I know you don’t get enough rest. Normally you know I’d be encouraging you to sleep as long as you need. But I need to you to come back to me now, okay? I need you to wake up and open your eyes and say my name and be you, and then we’ll go back to Anguilla, to the little villa, and we will nap on the veranda together. We won’t have to worry anymore, not about anything, right? I will teach you every constellation in the sky, because I will learn them all for you. You will cook me fabulous food, and we’ll drink good wine, and we won’t get out of bed for days on end, and you can sleep, okay? You can sleep and sleep and sleep, and I won’t bother you, I’ll stand guard and make sure no one and nothing disturbs you. But right now I need you to _wake up_ , Sherlock. _Wake. Up_.”

Sherlock did not wake up. 

John put his head down on Sherlock’s bed and registered that he was actually too exhausted to even cry. 

***

For a long time Sherlock could not make sense of what was going on. He thought vaguely that, under normal circumstances, he should have been annoyed by that, but he couldn’t be bothered. He drifted comfortably, and much of the time everything was silent and dark and it was lovely and just what he needed, and then little by little the silence and darkness leaked away and then things were incredibly loud and everything _hurt_ and Sherlock tried to make sense of all of this, of the beeping and whirring all around him and the fact that his legs were heavy and he couldn’t move his arms and that his head throbbed like one enormous bee sting. But it was exhausting to make sense of it and easier to just wish that everything would get dark and silent again. 

And then, abruptly, slicing through everything, came a single voice, saying his name. “Sherlock,” it said, sharp and begging all at once. “Sherlock, _please_.”

 _John_ , thought Sherlock, and, annoyed at the silence and the darkness, began pushing it away. It was sticky and stubborn and kept trying to pull him back, but he swirled toward John, keeping the fact of him in his head. John, John, John, somewhere, wanting him, looking for him, calling him, and he was keeping him _waiting_ , and Sherlock struggled and struggled, and when he opened his eyes he was more exhausted than he’d ever been in his entire life, and he was a little annoyed to find himself lying in bed. All that work just to wake up in _bed_. 

The room was dim, although not dark. His eyes were clearly open. He looked at the ceiling for a little while, and it took him a long time to determine that it was unfamiliar. He frowned, thinking that he did not know where he was, and that was unacceptable. There was data, all around him, he just needed to take it in. 

He turned his head, which was a huge mistake, both because he was hooked up to enough tubes that he couldn’t really turn it and because it _hurt_ , pain slicing up through his spine, and he thought he might be in danger of falling backward into all that silent darkness again. But then he breathed through it, and it subsided somewhat, and he made sense of the fact that yes, he was in bed, and there was someone leaning on the bed with him. Sitting in the chair next to him, slumped forward so his head was on the mattress, near Sherlock’s hip. Sherlock peered at the head, whose back was to him, so it wasn’t like he could see his face. _John_ , he thought, and then, once he had placed him, _Yes, of course it’s John, how could I have been so idiotic not to have seen that immediately?_

He tried to speak, to say John’s name, but he couldn’t figure out how to make sound come out of his mouth. Well. That was inconvenient. He _used_ to know how to talk. Didn’t he? 

His hand was close to John’s head. He tried to lift it, to put a hand in John’s hair, but his hand wouldn’t budge. It lay heavy and unresponsive on the mattress. Sherlock stared at it in a mix of irritation and disbelief. All of this was absolutely unacceptable. He concentrated very, very hard and got his fingers to twitch. Well, he supposed. That was something. Concentrating again, he got them to twitch against John’s skull, the merest brush of contact, and then he had to rest because he was exhausted again. 

But it seemed to have been enough. John stirred on the bed, and Sherlock willed him to wake up, but all John seemed to do was turn his head over. Sherlock could see his face now, and his eyes were closed, apparently sleeping. 

Annoying, Sherlock thought. John did so much _sleeping_. 

Sherlock didn’t mean to drift away from John again because he thought that it did because the next time he opened his eyes it was brighter in the room. He thought it was, at least. Grayer. His sense of time was confused. He didn’t remember sleeping, but he seemed to have the idea that waking up had been easier this time, that the darkness had clung to him less tightly, had released him more easily. 

John was in the same sport, head still by Sherlock’s hip, facing Sherlock, eyes still closed in sleep. Sherlock gathered together some remnants of energy and twitched his fingers again. He didn’t touch John—he wasn’t close enough—but John must have sensed something _finally_ because his eyes opened. He stared at Sherlock’s fingers on the mattress in front of him, and Sherlock, getting the hang of it, twitched his index finger. _Hello_ , he meant it to say. 

John sat up so quickly that he knocked the chair over with a loud clatter that echoed like a just-rung bell through Sherlock’s head, and Sherlock winced, and then John was leaning over him, brushing his hair back with the lightest of touches. 

“Sherlock,” he said. “Oh my God, _Sherlock_.”

Sherlock looked up at him and tried to explain, using his eyes, that he couldn’t speak just yet, and he was very tired, and perhaps John could stop yelling at him. 

“Good,” said John, clearly speaking more to himself than to Sherlock. “Good, this is good. Stay awake for me, okay? Can you stay awake? I need to go get the doctors and I need to— This is good. This is very good.”

He was repeating himself, thought Sherlock. How tiresome. How very like him. 

John disappeared out of Sherlock’s eyeline, and Sherlock was too exhausted to turn his head to keep him in sight, and, anyway, the memory of the pain he had experienced the last time he had done that was enough to deter him.

Then John reappeared, and he was grinning. “Sorry,” he said. “I didn’t even say hello. Hello. I’ve missed you. I love you. Good, a smile, that’s what I was going for.”

Was he smiling? Sherlock wasn’t sure, but he supposed he was. It was nice that John still had the ability to make Sherlock smile without Sherlock having to put effort into it. It was yet another thing to love about John Watson. 

“I’ll be right back,” John said. “I’m going to fetch the doctors. Don’t go anywhere. Stay here with me.”

Sherlock wanted to ask where he would go. He had no desire to go anywhere that wasn’t with John. 

***

Sherlock was, predictably, a terrible patient, but John relished every moment of complaining that he did. He recovered in leaps and bounds once he’d woken up, and by the time they released him from the hospital he sounded entirely like his old self, speaking in rapid-fire, disapproving paragraphs of deductive brilliance about everything. John was relieved beyond belief. There was always so much danger with head wounds, so much fear that the person receiving the wound might not be the same afterward, but Sherlock was very recognizably himself. 

The thing that took the longest to heal was Sherlock’s broken leg. Sherlock hobbled around detesting it and making sure John knew he detested it, and John knew he was feeling better the day he started complaining about it less and started using it more as an excuse to make John do more for him than John normally did. 

By then summer had come to London. Well, the week of summer that London usually enjoyed. The days were warm and the sun was bright and John and Sherlock had stopped looking over their shoulders. There were no assassins in the building opposite them. John threw open the windows and let fresh air and city sounds into the flat, and he looked at Sherlock, newly off his crutches and perched at the kitchen table, lost in his microscope. 

“Let’s go for a walk,” John suggested. 

“What if we miss a client whilst we’re out?”

“We’ll have Mrs. Hudson ring us. Come on,” John wheedled. “It’s a gorgeous day, and the fresh air will do you good.”

“I don’t see why you say that. The air is full of pollen, it will clog up my nasal passages.”

“You’re not allergic to pollen.”

“I _could_ be.”

“Come outside with me,” John said, and kissed the base of Sherlock’s neck. 

“ _Fine_ ,” agreed Sherlock, with the air of doing John a great favor. 

John insisted on Regent’s Park. Sherlock, once outside, relaxed into the excursion. John bought them ice cream cones and watched Sherlock eat his with the relish of the true sweet-lover that Sherlock Holmes was, and, as they walked, he reached out and took Sherlock’s hand. Sherlock didn’t even notice. Sherlock was in the middle of a monologue about ice cream melting times and murdering people in freezers and other things John was only half-listening to. Children laughed and played in the distance and an airplane droned overhead and traffic noises drifted over to them and Sherlock suddenly stopped walking. 

John looked back at him. 

Sherlock was staring down at their joined hands. Then he looked up at John. “You _planned_ this,” he accused. 

“Hand-in-hand in Regent’s Park,” John affirmed. “Isn’t that what you told me you wanted? Ages ago?”

Sherlock used their joined hands to tug John closer to him. “It turns out that was an extremely specific request.”

“Yes. It was.”

“What I really wanted was you.”

“I knew that. I knew it as soon as I read your letters. Here.” John reached into the back pocket of his jeans and pulled out the envelope he’d stuck in there that morning. “This is for you.”

Sherlock had to drop John’s hand to take it, since his other hand was still holding his ice cream cone. He thrust the ice cream cone into John’s hand, the better to pull the letter out of the envelope. 

_Dear Sherlock_ , the letter began. _I do not have your way with words. Which is funny because I’m the one who is theoretically the writer._

“It’s your letter,” Sherlock said, in amazement. “You wrote me your letter again.”

“Well. I tried to. I didn’t have it memorized, so this is just the general gist.”

“Yes,” agreed Sherlock, affably. “You did get it a bit wrong.” But he looked so delighted to be holding the letter that John took no offense. He flipped it over to the back, where John’s list trailed off this time into _To be continued_. Sherlock frowned a bit. “You didn’t _end_ it.”

“Because it doesn’t end, Sherlock,” John said, firmly. “It’s never going to end. I will never come to the end of the list of things I love about you.” John took a step closer to him. “Because now I can just _say_ it to you, and I will say it to you every day. I love you more than I can say, more than I can tell you, so I’m going to show you. I will never let you shatter. I will keep you safe and sound. My love. My life. My heart.”

Sherlock stared at him, and then he reached for him and kissed him, hand-in-hand, in Regent’s Park. 

 

 

THE END


End file.
